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Jazz looked at Vyotsky's grinning face, said: 'Oh, I think I'd prefer the
drink every time.'
'Very well, but try to remember: you are in no position to criticize anything.
You are a spy, a murderer, a would-be saboteur. And remember this, too: you
don't know everything.
We don't know everything! Weapons? Like . . . like that? Personally I would
rather close the place down, concrete it in, lock the Gate shut forever - if
that's at all feasible. So would Viktor Luchov. But the Projekt was sponsored
- indeed it was ordered - by the Defence Agency. We don't control anything,
Michael, but are ourselves controlled. Now make up your mind: we can be
"friends", or I can have someone else, someone a lot less sympathetic,
complete your briefing. It's up to you.'
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Briefing? For some reason Jazz didn't like the way Khuv had used the word. A
slip of the tongue, obviously. Briefing didn't really apply here, did it?
Why are you being given the treatment?
a voice asked in the back of his mind.
What's in it for them?
He didn't have the answers and so put the question aside, said:
'OK, I accept that. We all do what we have to. We all have our orders. But
just answer me one more thing and after that I won't interrupt you again.'
Khuv ushered Jazz and Vyotsky into his living area. 'Very well,' he said,
'what is it?'
'That thing in the glass tank, your intruder from another world,' Jazz
wrinkled his nose in disgust. 'You say it has a keeper? Someone who looks
after it, feeds it, studies it?
It's just that I can't imagine what kind of a man he would be. He must have
nerves of steel!'
'What?' Vyotsky gave a snort that was half-way a laugh. 'Do you think he
volunteered? He's a scientist, a small man with thick spectacles. A man
dedicated to science -
also to the bottle.'
Jazz raised an eyebrow. 'An alcoholic?'
Khuv's expression didn't change. 'Very soon,' he said after a moment's pause.
'Yes, I'm afraid he will be . . .'
Three hours later, at about 7:30 p.m. - after Jazz had had delivered to him in
his cell a cup of tepid, flavourless coffee and a cold meat sandwich, standard
evening fare, and after he'd consumed both - he lay on his back on his metal
army bed and yet again turned over in his mind all the facts Khuv had given
him. The Russian had talked almost nonstop for an hour and a half, during
which time the British agent had remained true to his word and had not once
interrupted him. Once Khuv was underway Jazz hadn't wanted to stop him anyway,
partly because the Russian's flow of words and images had been smooth and
required no deep explanation, but mainly because his story had been completely
fascinating.
And now, yet again, Jazz recapped:
The Perchorsk Incident or 'pi' had been the disastrous test run of Franz
Ayvaz's sub-atomic shield. After that mess, clearing up had almost been
completed when 'Pill'
happened, which Khuv referred to as Encounter One; but from what the KGB Major
had told Jazz, it hadn't been so much an encounter as a downright nightmare!
The - creature? - which had come through the sphere of light on that occasion
had been . . . well, it had been the monstrosity Jazz had seen on the film
shot by the AWACS
reconnaissance aircraft over the Hudson Bay, which now he realized was like
nothing so much as the Big Brother of the thing in the glass tank. But when
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Big Brother had squeezed its bulk into this world from its own. . .
Khuv's description of Encounter One as he himself had heard it from people
present at the time had been graphic:
'You've seen it, Michael, on that film you told us about. You know what it was
like. Ah, but that was only after it had escaped through the shaft into the
ravine and got itself airborne! On the ground it had been far worse; oh, yes,
and I'll tell you about it from first-hand accounts! First, however, I'll try
to explain how the Gate works. Or I'll describe what happens when it works.
The "skin" of the sphere - its "surface" as we see it - is in itself a
contradiction of physics as we understand that science. Viktor
Luchov has likened it to an "event horizon". We see things on it after, and
even in advance of, any given event! In the former case as a sort of retinal
after-image printed in the sphere, and in the latter as a gradual emergence
until the - whatever - breaks through.
'They actually saw that thing coming - but they didn't know what they were
seeing! Remember, it was the first. They saw it in the sphere: a gradual
darkening of part of the surface up near the sphere's dome. The dark patch
became a shape, the shape a sort of misty three-dimensional picture, and the
image - in a little while -reality. They saw
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the head and face of a bat four or five feet across: like a hologram but
slowly, oh so slowly, changing. It was all in slow motion, a fascinating thing
to witness. So they thought. The wrinkling of the convolute snout, which
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