Keith Laumer - A Plague of Demons

“Yeah, Jones. I see the place. It’s all blanked off, like. It’s like trying to poke a hole through a steel plate with your finger. But—”

“But what?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Jones. I just got a feeling—if I touched it just right… Look, let me show you.”

I extended awareness, touched the probe that was an extension of Joel’s mind-field. I followed as it reached into the dim glow of the paralyzed mind, thrust among layered patterns of pseudolight, past complex structures that towered into unguessed levels of existence, deep into the convoluted intricacy of the living brain, to touch the buried personality center—encysted, inert, a pocket of nothingness deep under a barrier of stunned not-thought.

“Don’t you see, Jones? It ought to be like, say, a taut cable with the wind making it sing. Something stopped it, clamped it down so’s it can’t move. All we got to do to set it free is give it a little push, and it’ll start up again.”

“All I see is a dead spot, Joel. If you can see all that, you’re way ahead of me. Go ahead and try it.”

“Here goes.”

I saw the finger of pure, focused energy reach out, touch the grayness—and the opacity faded and was gone.

“Okay so far,” Joel said. “Now—”

Like a jeweler cleaving a hundred-carat rough diamond, Joel poised, then struck once, sharply—

And the glow that had been the moron mind of a slave sprang up in dazzling light; and into the gray continuum where thought moved like a living force, words came:

“FAEDER URE, HVAD DEOFELS GIRDA HA WAER-LOGAS CRAEFT BRINGIT EORLA AV ONGOL-SAXNA CYNING TILL!”

The huge fighting machine parked forty feet away across the rocky ledge backed suddenly, lowered its guns, traversed them across the empty landscape, brought them to bear on me.

“Watch him, Jones!” Joel said sharply. “He’s scared; he’s liable to get violent!”

In the instant that the strange voice had burst from the slave unit, my probing contact had been thrust back by an expanding mind-field as powerful as Joel’s.

“We’re friends!” I called quickly in the Command code. “Fellow prisoners!” I thrust against the pressure of the newly awakened mind, found the automated combat-reflex circuitry, clamped down an inhibiting field—enough to impede a fire-order, at least for a moment.

“VA’ EORT THE, FEOND?” the strange voice shouted, a deafening bellow in my mind. “STEO FRAM AR MOET EACTA STOEL AV KRISTLIG HOEDERSMANN!”

I plucked the conditioned identity-concept from the mind before me, called to it in the Command code:

“Unit twenty-nine of the Anyx Brigade! Listen—”

“AHH! EO MINNE BONDEDOM MID WYRD! AETHELBERT AV NION DOEDA, COERLA GEOCAD TI’ YFELE ENA—”

It roared out its barbaric jargon, overtones of fright and horror rising like blood-stained tides in the confused mind. I tried again:

“I’m a friend—an enemy of the Command-voice. You’ve been a slave—and I’m another slave—in revolt against the masters!”

There was a moment of silence, then: “A fellow slave? What trickery is this?” This time it spoke in the familiar Command code.

“It’s no trick,” I transmitted. “You were captured, but now you’re free—”

“Free? All’s not well with me, invisible one! I wear the likeness of a monstrous troll-shape! Enchantments hold me yet in bondage. Where is my blade, Hrothgar? Where are my peers and bondsmen? What fire-blasted heath is this before me?”

“I’ll explain all that later. There are only a few of us. We’re under siege; we need you to fight with us against the aliens.” I talked to the frightened mind, soothing it, explaining as much as I could. At last it seemed to understand—at least enough that I could withdraw my grip on its fire-control circuitry.

“Ah, I feel a part of the spell released!” the freed mind exclaimed. “Now soon perhaps I’ll feel Hrothgar’s pommel against my palm, and waken from this dream of hell!”

“I was holding you,” I said. “I was afraid you’d fire on me before I could explain.”

“You laid hands on an earl of the realm!” He was roaring again.

“Not hands; just a suggestion—to keep you from doing anything hasty.”

“Hello, Aethelbert,” Joel put in. “Sure glad to have you with us.”

“What’s this, a second imp? By holy Rood and the sacred birds of Odin, I ill-like these voices that seem to echo inside my very helm!”

“You’ll get used to it,” Joel said matter-of-factly. “Now listen, Aethelbert; Jones has got to fill you in on the situation, ’cause I guess they’ll be starting their attack any minute now, and you’ve got to—”

“Are you freeman or earl who speaks to Aethelbert of the Nine Deeds of what ‘must be’?”

“Joel,” I interrupted. “Try another one; wake as many as you can—but hold onto their battle-reflexes until you get them calmed down.” Then, to our new comrade: “We’re surrounded; there are thousands of them down there—see for yourself. And simple or gentle, we’re all in this together.”

“Yes—never have I seen such a gathering of forces; what battle is this we fight—” He broke off suddenly. “A strange thing it is, unseen one, but now I sense in my memory a vast lore of great troll-wars, fought with fire and magic under a black sky with a swollen moon, and I seem to see myself among them—an ogre of the ogres.”

A call came from Joel: “I got another one, Jones! I don’t know what he’s saying, but it’s not in Command code; sure sounds excited!”

“Keep it up, Joel.” While he worked, I talked to Aethelbert. He was quick to grasp the situation, once he understood that I was only another combat unit like himself. Then he was ready to launch a one-man attack.

“Well I remember the shape of the sorcerer: like a slinking dog it came, when I beached my boat on the rocky shore of Oronsay under Sgarbh Brene. My earls fell like swooning maidens without the striking of a blow—and then the werewolf was on me, and Hrothgar’s honed edge glanced from its hide as a willow wand from the back of a sullen housewench. And now they have given me shape of a war-troll! Now will I take such revenge as will make Loki roar over his mead-horn!”

“You’ll get your fill of revenge, Aethelbert,” I assured him. “But wait until I give the order. This will be a planned operation, not a berserk charge.”

“No man orders me, save the king, my cousin… yet well I know the need for discipline. Aye, Jones! I’ll fight under your standard until the necromancers are dead, root and branch!”

“Jones!” Joel cut in. “Here’s another one! He’s talking American; all bout Very lights and Huns.”

I tuned to the new man, broke into his excited shouts.

“Take it easy, soldier! You’re back inside the Allied lines now. I know everything feels strange, but you’ll be all right in a minute—”

“Who’s that? Boy, I knew I shouldn’t of drunk that stuff—apple brandy, she said—”

I gave him a capsule briefing, then went on to another—a calm, cool mind speaking strangely accented Arabic. He blamed all his troubles on an evil djinn of the sorcerer Salomon, in league with the Infidels. I let him talk, getting it all straight in his mind—then cued him to bring his conditioned battle-experience into his conscious awareness. He switched to Command code without a break in the stream of his thoughts.

“By the virtue of the One God, such a gathering of units was never seen! Praise Allah, that I should be granted such a wealth of enemies to kill before I die!”

I managed to hold him from a headlong charge, then picked up a new voice, this one crying out in antique Spanish to his Compeador, Saint Diego, God, and the Bishop of Seville. I assured him that all was well, and went on to the next man—a former artilleryman whose last recollection was of a charge by French cavalry, the flash of a saber—then night, and lying alone among the dead, until the dogs came…