Роберт Грант - The Quanderhorn Xperimentations

Troy looked somewhat sheepish.

‘Troy, please tell me that’s not your Ego out there.’

The boy didn’t raise his eyes from the floor. ‘He doesn’t want you in our head.’

More thumps, and the door actually bulged. ‘He sounds gigantic!’

‘Yes. He is.’ Troy shrugged. ‘I just think I’m really great, that’s all.’

Another thump, and the door began to splinter alarmingly.

I had to work fast. I wrenched back the eye lever and blinds immediately rolled up on the huge picture windows taking up most of the opposite wall. Finally I could see the interior of the stricken craft, and the panic that was going on inside.

But before I could engage the ears, the door finally burst into thousands of fragments, and Troy’s gigantic Ego stomped in, bringing the door frame and a good deal of the wall with it, effortlessly shattering the sideboard with a single blow.

It had a huge head. Its features were a grotesque parody of Troy’s face, with alarmingly little flinty eyes and two rows of teeth, triangular, sharp and interlocking, as if someone had fashioned a set of dentures from a bear trap. Its arm and leg muscles were hideously inflated, like sausage skins crammed full of basketballs and melons. Also, it drooled rather a lot.

‘ Me! Me! Meeeee!’ it roared, beating its mighty chest with fists that could have hammered a concrete pile to the centre of the Earth.

‘Quickly, Troy: this is a psychological emergency! The only thing that can subdue him is your Superego!’

‘Is he that annoying bloke who’s always trying to tell me what to do?’

‘That’s the chap. Where is he?’

‘I keep him in here.’ Troy reached under the chair cushion and took out a matchbox.

A matchbox .

From inside it, a tiny voice squeaked: ‘Let me out! Let me out!’

I sighed. This, I had to admit, did explain rather a lot.

The Ego advanced upon us, hurling shredded furniture in its wake as it bellowed in fury: ‘ Me! Me! Meeeee!’

Unperturbed, I was confident, as per the well-known theories of Dr. Kakark Bumpp, our foremost Martian Thinkalyser (whose work was shamelessly plagiarised by that despicable Terranean brain-quack, Sigmund Freud) that however large an ego may grow, it would always be subservient to the moderating influence of even the most underdeveloped Superego. ‘Stand back!’ I yelled, flipping open the matchbox and liberating the mighty psychological force contained therein.

‘Free at last!’ the tiny well-kempt Troy squeaked boldly, leaping from the box like a cricket and fearlessly placing himself squarely in the path of the marauder. ‘Now listen to me, you—’

And he was gone. Down the monster’s mouth, chewed up and swallowed before you could say the ‘J’ from Jack Robinson.

This was bad. There was now nothing to stop the slobbering behemoth from indulging its vilest bloodlust. I had no doubt in my mind I’d soon be joining the little man on his journey to stomach land.

Desperately, I reached out and threw the switch for the ears…

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 1st January, 1952 – Iteration 66

Troy was frozen. I tried to reach the button one last time, but I couldn’t move a single muscle in my arms, so great was the G-force.

‘ Gravitational wave impact in fifteen seconds.’

I managed, with some considerable effort, to swivel my head slightly towards Dr. Janussen. ‘This is the beginning, Gemma. It’s all starting now. I want you to know that… I hate you so very much.’

She opened her mouth to reply, but then Troy bunched his right fist and suddenly punched himself in the face very very hard and yelled ‘Ouch!’

‘Troy?’ Was he awake? Was there still hope?

Abruptly, his eyes bugged open. And, bizarrely, through his mouth, Guuuurk’s voice issued. ‘Brian! Gemma! It’s me, Guuuurk!’ How on earth could such a thing be happening? Nonetheless, it continued. ‘I’m here in Troy’s brain and I’m in desperate trouble!’

Guuuurk? Inside Troy’s mind? And he seemed to be protected from the effects of Reverse Reality. Though I, of course, was not: ‘Guuuurk! You mustn’t press the button now !’

But something very odd indeed was going on inside Troy’s head. ‘Agh!’ came Guuuurk’s voice again. ‘It’s got my feet in its mouth!’ There was a pause, and he added: ‘It’s all going terribly wrong!’

Troy’s body lurched forward nonetheless. His hand shot out and shakily moved towards the button.

‘You’re absolutely nowhere near it!’ I shouted encouragingly.

‘Almost there,’ Guuuurk/Troy strained. ‘Ah! No! Get off, you hideous beast! Owwwwww!’

Secret Report to Martian Command, by Guuuurk [cont’d]

‘ Owwwwww!’ The creature had me in its terrible maw. Ignoring the pain completely, I made one last, valiant, self-sacrificing effort to reach the button. And I was close, so close… But then, blackness.

And in an eternity that lasted a heartbeat, the rushing winds carried me back to my body, despite all my efforts to bravely and valiantly remain in the danger zone.

For a moment, I was disoriented, still between realms. ‘ Uuuuurrrrhhhh … It’s dribbling on my spats…’

Water splashed on my face. I shook my head and opened all six of my eyes to see Quanderhorn in each and every one of them. ‘Dammit! Wake up, Guuuurk! Did you press the button?’

Had I reached it? ‘I honestly don’t know, Professor.’

‘Then you’ve got to go back!’

‘I can’t!’ Desperate as I was to get back to the extraordinarily dangerous situation, mind-hopping is extremely draining, as you all know, and requires a minimum of ninety-six Martian hours of recuperation between jaunts.

‘Dammit again! Well, at least we prevented the end of the world. As I correctly calculated, the top of the mountain tumbled directly into the sinkhole, sealing it completely. And all we lost were a few herds of goats and six or seven monasteries. Still, that’s no consolation if my brilliant, brave son has needlessly sacrificed his life.’

I was beginning to see how Troy’s ego problem might have evolved. ‘And Brian and Dr. Janussen, of course,’ I added.

‘ Nmmmmmmm ,’ the Professor mumbled vaguely.

The voice I was dreading blasted out of the speaker: ‘ Gravitational wave impact in two… one…’

We held our breath. A second surely passed. And surely another one. I peered for the blip on the radar screen. It had vanished. Had the ship been destroyed, or had it accelerated out of range? The answer came suddenly:

‘ Gravitational wave evaded!’

The comms desk burst back into life. ‘The communi-link’s restored!’ Quanderhorn roared. ‘Guuuurk! Resume the remote controls immediately!’

I dashed to the control panel, grabbed the joystick and hailed the craft.

‘Guuuurk to Dustbin Deathtrap! Bringing you home remotely.’ I fired the retro-rockets. ‘You should be dropping below X-barrier speed any moment now…’

Over the radio I heard Dr. Janussen say ‘I want you to know, Brian, I don’t like you terribly much.’

‘Sorry?’ Brian stuttered. ‘What?’

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 2nd January, 1952 – Iteration 66

We splashed down in Lake Windermere, where Jenkins was waiting to take us home. As Troy, Dr. Janussen and I stepped into his patched rubber dinghy Gargantua, Goddess of the Waters , I looked back at the stricken craft that had borne us. It was now nothing more than a half-melted lump of amorphous metal with jagged tears in the structure on all sides, and was taking in water fast.