Kenneth Bulmer - The Key to Irunium

“You aren’t slaving in the mines, offal,” said Cino with a sneering grin that no ordinary human being grinned. “You’re joining the Transportation Corps.”

The overwhelming presence of the rain forest at their backs dwarfed everything else about them; one would never escape from that swarming green nightmare. They went into a concrete box with a few windows and a large red star over the door, masquerading as an office block, but even inside the building Prestin felt the domination of the Cabbage Patch.

A fussy little majordomo met them, wearing a neat gray suit off the peg of some smart Italian tailor’s shop. His face showed the oily will-to-please that brought out mulish disobedience in Prestin. Cino jerked his Mauser.

“This one is good, Cyrus. He’s the one who sent the girl, Upjohn, through.”

The faded little man rubbed his hands in usurious glee. “So! The Contessa drives us hard. Any extra help, especially at this time, is very welcome.”

“Your worries slay me.” Cino’s contempt dripped.

“Come with me—what’s his name? I did hear about that girl, but—”

“Prestin. Robert Infamy.”

The little man giggled. Prestin had to admit sourly that he possessed something that resembled a sense of humor. “R.I.P.? He, he! He’s come to the right place!”

“Get lost,” said Cino, holstering the gun. He left without a backward glance. Any ideas of jumping the little fellow and taking off were dispelled with sobering speed as two Honshi guards stepped up to escort him. Cyrus led with a skipping little walk.

They marched over cheap rush matting laid on the concrete and, oddly enough, Prestin found himself keeping step with the guards as Cyrus skipped ahead. The air of secrecy and mystery deepened when they entered a small room whose only light fell from blue lamps clustered in the ceiling.

“Quiet, now!” whispered Cyrus.

The cathedral hush and clinical sterility enveloped them.

A man sat on a plain wooden chair, a shrouded figure with his hands to his head, bent over, meditating. A small mound of jewels lay on a table before him, sparkling luridly in the diamond-bright spotlight, to form a focal-point of brilliance in the room. Prestin caught the vaguely outlined shape of Honshi guards in the shadows beyond. The man sat as though made from putty.

The jewels lay neatly heaped in the center of a yellow circle painted on the table.

The jewels disappeared.

Prestin blinked.

The hunched figure pushed back with a sigh, straightened, and rubbed shaking hands over white hair. The man turned his head so that the blue light caught stubbled jawbone and cheek, set a blue star in his pupil, turned his face and teeth into ghoulish terrors. The man’s hair could be gray, Prestin realized—the all pervading blueness made quick color identification difficult—but his hair should be white. The fitness of things ought to be preserved.

A Honshi—not a guard but some sort of overseer—placed another small heap of jewels on the yellow circle, counting them out meticulously. They were totaled up by an assistant operating a small comptometer slung on a leather strap around his neck.

“There you are, Graves!” Echoing from a speaker screwed to the wall below the spy-eye of a TV camera, a hard, young metallic voice spoke with level authority. “Porteur, Graves!”

But the shaking man had shrunk back, his hands raised as though to ward off a blow, his features sagging blue-gray and awful. “No more!” he said, croaking the words. “My brain is on fire! No more—give me a rest!”

“Two minutes, Graves!” the metallic voice hammered with all the insolence of youthful authority. “Then—Porteur! Otherwise you know what will happen!”

“Yes.” Graves collapsed back onto the chair, his shoulders heaving, his head sunk. “Yes, I know.”

Now Prestin understood what he was witnessing; understood what David Macklin and the Montevarchi had wanted; understood why the girl in the bath had offered herself; and understood, with choking claustrophobic horror, what was going to happen to him.

Cyrus said, “I have a replacement—if you would—”

The young voice from the speaker answered, “Very well, Cyrus. Wheel him in. And you, Graves. Go and rest. And, Graves, remember”—the voice harshened with a menace that prickled Prestin’s skin—”tomorrow you will Porteur twice as much! Go, offal.”

Honshi guards dragged Graves away; the beaten, broken man hung between them, shoulders peaked like steeples of the devil.

Cyrus pointed at the chair. Without arguing, Prestin sat down. He felt acutely conscious of all the frog-like eyes regarding him with that typical Honshi lack of external emotion; their fear of the human prisoner had abated with numbers and the surroundings. “Well?” he said.

“The yellow circle exists at the exact position of a nodal point, Prestin.” The hard voice from the speaker splattered the blue-lit room with sharp-edged echoes. “You will Porteur those jewels across. You will do this for the Contessa and she will be very pleased with you.”

“An interesting set-up.” Prestin spoke evenly. He felt sick. “But you have forgotten one thing. I cannot Porteur objects at will. I do not know how it is done.”

“We will teach you, Prestin. You can do it, that means you have a Porteur’s mind. With the equipment you have, you can be taught. I have heard of the girl, Upjohn. You will work well for the Contessa.”

“Until I’m a beaten wretch like Graves?”

“You were offered the alternative.”

Cyrus wheeled forward a trolley-mounted switchboard covered with high-voltage liquid switching units, ammeters, voltmeters, gauges the significance of which escaped Prestin, and electrodes on expanding leads. Cyrus took up an electrode and began to unwind it. He told Prestin, “This won’t hurt me as much as it’ll hurt you.” He giggled again.

Prestin felt his mouth fill with vomit. He swallowed and gagged and tried to rise, but the Honshi guards held him as Cyrus clipped the electrodes around his arms, legs and back. His clothes had been through a great deal since he had landed in Rome; this was their final indignity. Now he was dressed in rags. His beard was coming along nicely, too.

Cyrus’s sense of humor now only evoked the red desire to smash and rend and kill.

“Porteur those jewels through the nodal point, Prestin!” The metallic voice chipped at him like a pneumatic drill.

“I can’t!” he said viciously, trying to tear free.

An electric shock hit him. He froze in his position, stunned, eyes like billiard balls. There was more than a mere electric shock there; he felt his brain as a separate entity, as a separate thing apart from his body, like an egg frying in a pan.

The Honshi guards holding him wore thick rubber gloves. He glared down, his head bent, his mouth drooling, as the shock passed through him. He had never realized that anything could hurt so much.

When it was over he fell back against the chair like a plastic bag emptied of water.

“That was both to encourage and help you, Prestin.” The impersonality of the voice from the speaker outraged Prestin; he would have preferred someone on which to focus his hate. Hating a loudspeaker and a TV eye was a sure-fire way to the nut-house.

“I don’t know what to do!” he said, and heard and disliked and feared the note of pleading in his voice.

The shock hit him again.

He slumped when it ended, shaking and feeling the sweat dripping off his forehead. “What do I do ?” he shouted.

The shock…

“Try, Prestin. We will help you. Focus your thoughts on the jewels. Use your God-given gift! Porteur them! Do it, Prestin !”

The shock hit… and he did it.