Keith Laumer - Zone Yellow

“First,” I insisted, “tell us why and how you trapped us in the precise locus where the coach was parked.”

“As to that,” he started, like a fellow getting ready to concoct a lie, “that was almost accidental. Of course, your vector-extrapolation indicated you’d pass that way and likely detect the vehicle’s field. I acted in haste, thinking only of protecting Her Highness.”

“I see,” I told him, and I did, sort of. “And why did you come running out of your office in your underwear?”

“I was monitoring the screens, of course, and when you phased in, I was unsure if it was indeed you, or the enemies of the Jade Palace. I knew the position of your shuttle―the coordinates were displayed along with the alarm signal―but when I stepped outside, I saw nothing. I hurried to the spot where you should have been, and in fact, were, of course―in half-phase, with the result you witnessed.”

“Sure,” I conceded. “Careless of you, if you expected your enemies. But how do we know they’re not the good guys, and you’re not the villain?”

“I can only pledge my word, on my honor as a peer of the Noble Folk,” he said, not as if he expected me to be much impressed. But for some reason, I believed him; somehow, he’d managed to make a favorable impression on me, wounded and captured as he was. I gave him my hand on it. He took it awkwardly.

“What’s the drill, General?” I wanted to know. “I take it you have a shuttle of some kind here?”

“None needed, Colonel,” he corrected me. “I have a transfer chamber, which will shift our primary awareness, with precision, to whatever coordinates in the space/time/vug continuum we may select, though temporal maneuverability is minimal. This way, please.”

It was an unexceptional-looking little booth, walled off’ in the center of a big, garage-like space, with banks of tightly-wound M-C coils or their equivalent packed up against the walls and across the ceiling. Inside, there were padded benches, the wrong size and shape for human anatomy. Swft made a few adjustments and converted a couple to flat, bunk-like affairs that would fit anybody.

“I must caution you, gentlemen,” he announced, as soon as he’d gotten Smovia and the baby comfortably settled, while Helm and I shifted for ourselves, “that you will experience, shall I say, ‘unusual’ sensations during the transfer, which lasts for only a few milliseconds of subjective time. Feel free to cry out if you wish, but do not move.” He stepped outside and closed the door on us.

I had a few hundred important questions I needed to ask, but before I could decide to go after him, the unusual sensations started up. It was almost indescribable: it included an uneasy sensation up under the ribs, in the solar plexus area, and a hot-needles feeling on the backs of my hands and the top of my thighs. It wasn’t painful, but was by far the most horrible sensation I ever experienced, worse than nausea and pain combined. I hung on and wished it would go away. I thought of looking at Smovia and Helm to see how they were taking it, but it was just a thought: the thought that I was in over my head and death was next. But after a while it faded out and left me feeling slightly confused but OK.

Smovia was already on his feet. Helm was slumped, out cold. Smovia slapped the backs of his hands and got him up, groggy but functioning. I said:

“What was that all about, doctor? What kind of sensation was that?”

“Something quite outside the realm of medical science as we understand it today,” he told me.

Helm made a gargling sound and said, “And I died. I know I was dying. But you’re still here, Doc, so I guess―Well, you could be dead, too. Where are we?”

“We’re in a transfer booth in General Swft’s out-station,” I reminded him.

“Where is he?” Smovia demanded, not unreasonably.

“He just stepped out, right before the feeling,” I informed him.

Helm lurched toward the door. I told him to hold on.

“Presumably,” I said, “we’ve been transferred to a receiving booth in the Ylokk capital. We’d better go slowly.”

“Happened too fast,” Helm supplied. “We came in here, and just as I got settled, zap! I was dying.” He looked at me appealingly.

“I really was,” he insisted. “I could feel myself adrift-, I know it was a change-over to another level of being. Death.”

“Not quite,” I corrected. “It was another kind of change-over. We moved across the continua to another A-line. We’re still alive, don’t worry.”

“Ja da, for all del,” the lad agreed, nodding. “But we crossed plenty of alternate A-lines in the shuttle, and nobody died―or felt like it.”

“We were protected by the circuitry of the shuttle,” I explained to him and myself. “This time we were exposed to the subjectively accelerated entropic flow, unshielded, something we usually experience at a much slower rate. This movement is associated in our deep minds with death, hence the horrible sensation.”

He looked around. “I notice Swft isn’t here,” he stated. “Damned rat probably abandoned us here to die.”

“He just stepped out,” I reassured him for some reason. Just then the enemy general stepped back in.

“Gentlemen,” Swft said abruptly, “I have deposited us in an abandoned warehouse near the Complex. The streets are dark, and few passersby should be here. We must step out cautiously―after I have scanned our surroundings, of course.” He slithered into one of the curiously-shaped chairs before a panel containing three ranks of small repeater screens, all of which were dark. He seemed to be satisfied, though, and got up and opened the exit door.

“Take care,” Swft cautioned. “There may be a slight disorientation, due to a small error of closure in the en tropic gradient. Allow me.” He didn’t wait for assent, but stepped out, and we followed him.

The bells were so close, they must be, I decided, inside my head. Clong! Cuh-long! Ong-ong! I grabbed my skull with both hands and tried to back away from the din, but it only got louder, closer, surrounding me, driving me to desperation. “Stop it!” I yelled, and willed the noise to stop.

“Stop!” a great voice boomed out. I got my eyes open against the weight of the clangor and saw Swft, sleek, handsome, a figure of dignity and nobility, to whom I was privileged to say, “The noise! It’s driving me―” I couldn’t say any more with the big spike driving into my chest. I saw that we were in a deserted street with pole lights and brick facades, and a vile odor of rotting flesh. Dead rats lay everywhere.

“Easy, Colonel,” the General ordered me. I tried, and the pain, along with the noise, began to fade.

“It’s your heart you’re hearing,” he was telling me. “Ordinarily, your auditory cortex suppresses awareness of it. Relax, now, and just let it fade away.”

I saw Helm, slumped against a light-pole, gagging.

“It’s going to be all right, Andy,” I tried to say. Doc Smovia staggered into my field of vision, green-faced, hugging the baby, who was still sleeping peacefully. The noise was gone as if it had never been. My chest felt all right, too. I steadied Smovia and took the infant and passed her to the general. Andy was blinking at me. “Colonel!” he gasped out. “Where . . . where . . . did―?”

“It’s all in our minds, Lieutenant,” I reassured him. “ ‘Error of closure,’ His Excellency called it.”

Smovia seemed back to normal. He looked a little pale in the light of a sodium-vapor lamp, but then everybody looks dead in that light. It wasn’t just him: the whole street had that same wan, dirty-yellow look, just like I felt. The scene was as horrible as the stench.