Leviathan Rising Part 29

"Then listen carefully. I do not know how long we've got. I've been trapped here for... it feels like... I don't know how long."

"Where?"

"Within this d.a.m.nable machine; inside this wretched containment field," Ulysses heard Oddfellow's strained words a split second after he saw them form on his lips. It was as if image and sound were fractionally out of sync.

"What was it designed to do?"

"What you see before you is the experimental prototype of Oddfellow's Matter Transmitting Device."

"A teleport?"

"That's what it was supposed to be, only something catastrophic occurred." Oddfellow seemed to peer past Ulysses, taking in the others gathered within the cellar-lab, before adding, "A spanner in the works, you might say."

"So where did it teleport you to?"

"Nowhere. Limbo? I don't know. All I do know is that I'm still trapped within it. If the power were to fail, I don't know what would happen; where I might end up. I rather suspect my component atoms would be spread across the ether, never to be reunited."

"Well, Smythe was right, it does explain the power drains and the problem with the lights," Ulysses said, half to himself as he tried to make sense of what the unreal Oddfellow was telling him. "But if you're trapped in there, how come you appeared to us during the seance? And how did you lead us here in this incorporeal form?"

"I have wondered the same thing myself," the floating Oddfellow admitted. "I can only presume that some other device was used to focus my signal and project me to those locations in this wretched form. But I don't know of such a device."

"I can help you there," Ulysses exclaimed excitedly, "Smythe and Wentworth's Patent Paranormal Anomaly Detector! That crazy gizmo of theirs must have inadvertently focused the signal." The lights in the cellar dimmed still further and bulbs on the panel of the sphere's control console flickered and faded. "But I rather suspect that we do not have much time. Just wait there. Don't go anywhere," Ulysses instructed the hovering ghost.

The dandy turned to the two technical whizzes working the logic engine next to him.

"This thing requires ma.s.sive reserves of energy," Smythe said, looking anxious. He and Wentworth had been listening in on Ulysses' communion with the dead.

"Ma.s.sive reserves."

"It's soon going to drain everything the house generators have got, and then it will conk out again."

"Never mind that," Ulysses snapped dismissively. "If you could couple your detector to the sphere, do you think you could lock onto Oddfellow's signal again, but this time extract it from the device?"

Smythe stared intently at Ulysses from behind his spectacles, the dying lights of the control panel dancing on the lenses. "It might be possible."

"Then do it," Ulysses commanded.

"But this thing's using up a great deal of power as it is," Smythe countered. "I don't think we'll be able to keep it running like this for much longer."

"We don't have time to think. Just do it."

Without another word, and only a nod to his partner, Smythe did as Ulysses commanded and the two parapsychologists set to work.

And it was then that the machine died. With a gut-wrenching sound of rapid deceleration that set a numbing chill in Ulysses' stomach, the whirling rings slowed, the last Christmas tree lights of the control panel winking out one by one.

Smythe's hypothesis had been all to accurate; running the sphere up to speed had drained Hardewick Hall's power supply, killing the generator.

The rings stopped spinning and the coc.o.o.n of light they made evaporated into shadow. The ghostly image of Alexander Oddfellow faded into oblivion too, and the cellar was plunged into total darkness. There were startled gasps from the gathered guests.

"d.a.m.n!" Ulysses swore. "Just as we were getting somewhere."

"If this is going to work, we're going to need another source of power," Smythe said his voice loud in the hushed darkness.

"Indeed," Ulysses growled. "But from where?"

Somewhere, far above the crumbling pile, thunder rumbled and lightning bathed the entire estate in a flickering flash of monochrome light.

The storm had broken.

VII - PHASE s.h.i.+FT.

"Are you quite sure this is a good idea, sir?" Nimrod asked, leaning far out of the garret window, a bulky length of vulcanised rubber-sheathed cable in his hands.

"Don't fuss, old chap," Ulysses chastised his manservant as he danced along the apex of the rain-slicked roof tiles. "It makes you sound like Nanny Fitzgerald. We've been in worse sc.r.a.pes than this."

"Yes, but you've never been out in the open, practically the highest thing in the vicinity of a thunderstorm with a trunk of copper wire in your hands before, as far as I am aware, sir," Nimrod replied, pointedly.

With a last, half-slipping lunge, Ulysses grabbed hold of the chimney stack and gave an audible sigh of relief.

"There. Made it," he called back over the drumming of the rain. "Should have this fixed up in a jiffy."

Wiping the rain from his eyes with the back of a hand, Ulysses set about the task of securing the cable to Hardewick Hall's lightning conductor. Three floors below in the cellar, Smythe and Wentworth were busily attaching their ghost detecting gizmo to Oddfellow's teleportation sphere, by candlelight. After the generator had failed, Smythe informed Ulysses that they had discovered that the machine's own reserve battery had retained enough energy to keep the sphere running on standby, as it had done for the last three months, and so still retained the teleport-trapped scientist's scrambled signal, but would only be able to do so for an hour at most. Time was once again of the essence.

"There, I'm done!" Ulysses called back to Nimrod as the downpour strengthened.

"Pardon, sir?" his manservant called back, his master's words subsumed by a booming thunderclap.

"Never mind. I'm coming do- "

The flash of prescience struck a split second before the storm did. Sizzling white light exploded around the rooftop and Ulysses felt its heat as he went skidding down the rain-slicked tiles. The garret window shot past and he flung out his right hand, hoping to catch hold of the guttering. His fingertips brushed the mossy lip of a drainpipe and then he was over. His fall was sharply arrested by Nimrod's grasping hand.

Ulysses winced in pain as his shoulder jarred, antagonising the old injury, but despite the white-hot lances of lightning that felt like they were flaring along his arm, Ulysses still managed a knotted smile as he looked up into the aquiline features of his loyal manservant, now leaning bodily out of the attic room window above him. He hung there for a moment, the rain steaming from his clothes in the aftermath of the searing lightning strike. Above him the conductor crackled with the last vestiges of storm-born electricity.

"Told you there was nothing to worry about, Nimrod," he grinned and then gasped as his shoulder pulled again.

"Quite, sir."

"I know they say lightning never strikes twice," Ulysses managed through gritted teeth, "but under the circ.u.mstances I wouldn't like to tempt fate, so, when you're ready, if you wouldn't mind reeling me back in, as it were?"

A matter of minutes later, back in the bas.e.m.e.nt laboratory, the sphere was running up to speed again. The vibrating hum of the whirling rings filled the s.p.a.ce with its organ-resonating force, the feeble light cast by candles stuck into the necks of empty wine bottles suffused by the lurid glowing sh.e.l.l of light at the centre of the gyroscopic machine. Everyone's hair stood on end like weird halos around their heads.

"Is it working?" Ulysses asked, sprinting over to join the boffins at the control panel. Wentworth was monitoring the sphere while Smythe was concentrating on the dials and switches adorning the front of his own device, now resting on the logic engine console in front of him.

"Let's see, shall we?"

Ulysses watched with baited breath, the ion charged hairs on his head streaming out around his scalp. As before, the image of the struggling Oddfellow appeared within the coruscating ball of light. It began to gain in opacity and colour, as if the old man were solidifying out of the ether in front of them, the incorporeal becoming corporeal again.

Whatever was happening to the aged inventor, it seemed to be hurting him.

"Father!" Emilia cried out as Oddfellow's features knotted in agony, strangely out-of-sync moans of pain wafting to them through the distorting containment field conjured by the machine.

And then, there he was, solid flesh and blood once more - although he looked pale and drawn - wearing the same clothes he had the day he disappeared, s.h.i.+rt sleeves rolled up, an untied bow tie loose about his neck.

"We've got him!" Smythe exulted.

"Got 'im!" Wentworth echoed.

"By Jove, they've done it," Daniel Dashwood gasped.

Tears running in tiny rivulets down her face, Emilia ran to her father as the circling concentric rings ground to a halt and the cellar was left lit only by the wax-dripping tapers. There was a distinct smell of burnt ozone and singed eyebrows.

"Emilia," the shaking scientist said weakly, his clothes and skin wet with perspiration, and took a faltering step out of the bounds of the matter transmitter. And then he collapsed, unconscious, into his daughters outstretched arms.

VIII - DEAL WITH THE DEVIL.

"How's he doing?" Ulysses asked, observing the wan figure lying swamped beneath the sheets and blankets of his own bed.

"All right, I suppose, all things considered," said Emilia as she gently mopped the old man's brow with a flannel. "Anything's an improvement on being dead."

"You've got a point there. And how are you doing?"

Emilia took a moment to answer. "Better," she said simply.

In the soft candlelight of the bedchamber she looked more tired, more overwrought, more resolved, more n.o.ble and more beautiful than he had ever seen her.

"I'll leave you two alone," Ulysses said, suddenly feeling like he was intruding.

"No," Emilia said sharply, her voice loud in the pervading stillness of the room. "Stay. Please?"

The old man suddenly stirred under the covers and murmured something.

"What's that, father?" Emilia asked, putting her ear close to his mouth.

"Is he here?" the old man asked again.

"Who?"

"Quicksilver," Oddfellow managed before his efforts to speak gave way to a phlegm-ridden bout of coughing.

"Yes, Ulysses is here."

Half opening rheum-encrusted eyes, Oddfellow turned his head on his pillow to look at Ulysses. A hand appeared from beneath the covers and the old man beckoned him over.

"h.e.l.lo, old chap," Ulysses said as he approached the bed. "How are you feeling?"

"Never mind that." Oddfellow sounded irritated. "I must speak with you alone."

"Father?" Emilia asked, surprised.

"Please leave us, my dear."

Emilia looked like she was about to protest, tears glistening at the corners of her eyes again. Then she thought better of it. "Very well." She sounded hurt. "I'll be out in the corridor if you need me."

"Understood," Ulysses said, feeling her pain but also keen to hear whatever it was that Oddfellow wanted to share with him.

"What is it, old chap?" Ulysses asked, as soon as he heard the door close softly behind Emilia.

"You know me of old, Quicksilver." Ulysses nodded. "And I know you. I know for example that you're not entirely the dandy playboy you make yourself out to be," he went on. "I know of your government connections, whereas, I believe, Emilia does not know how involved you are with the defence of the realm of Magna Britannia."

"I think you're right," Ulysses confessed. "It was that secrecy that drove a wedge between us in the past."

"But now is not the time to tell her either," Oddfellow warned. "There is still action that must be taken to bring this matter to an end," he wheezed and then coughing consumed him again.

"But it's over, isn't it?" Ulysses pressed.

"Would that it were," the old man managed. "Would that it were. You now know what that thing in the bas.e.m.e.nt is," he growled bitterly.

"Yes, it's incredible - an experimental teleportation device. It's an incredible feat of scientific invention, Oddfellow." Ulysses gushed.

"It was slow progress at first, but then I got myself a sponsor and, with the necessary financial backing, I was really starting to get somewhere. But then certain things came to my attention - nothing major, just niggling doubts - and I began to suspect that, how shall I put this?" He broke off to cough again.

"Go on," Ulysses urged impatiently.

"Well, that certain malign agencies had taken an interest in what I was doing and were funding the project, intent on getting their hands on the fruits of my labours. You know the accident that trapped me inside the transmat's containment field?"

"Of course."

"Well, it wasn't entirely an accident."

"You were set-up? A b.o.o.by-trap?"

"Something like that. I believe it was the work of..." Oddfellow paused, lowering his voice to a whisper, even though there was no one else present to hear. "An agent of the n.a.z.is."