Роберт Грант - The Quanderhorn Xperimentations

‘Sound-deadening helmets?’ Gemma glanced at me.

‘There may be…’ Perhaps the others didn’t notice Quanderhorn’s almost imperceptible hesitation, but I did. ‘…temporal hallucinations down there, and we can’t risk them disorienting you. Not at this critical moment.’

Temporal hallucinations indeed! He knew jolly well what was down there, and he knew jolly well they were real.

He slickly moved on: ‘Troy, bring the Gallus Tempus . We have to get to the cellar and start bailing as soon as humanly possible. The rest of you will need to take over in turns. This way.’

He raised a section of carpet in the corner, wrenched open the trapdoor concealed beneath, and disappeared down some rough wooden steps, followed by Troy tugging a wildly tottering Guuuurk. ‘How am I supposed to run down stairs when I can only see where I’ve been ?’ he wailed.

I made to follow, but Gemma caught my arm and in a confidential tone asked: ‘You never said – what was it your duplicate told you back there?’

Now it was my turn to hesitate.

‘He told me,’ I replied honestly, but not quite fully, ‘where I could find all the answers I sought. The answers to everything.’

‘ Lab-Busting bomber squadron ninety seconds away .’

‘Not that it will matter if we all get blown to smithereens first.’

There was a scream and a clattering noise below us, and Guuuurk yelled: ‘Who left that beastly invisible shield there?’

We descended breathlessly through the gloom towards the faint blue glow from the cavern at the base.

By the time we arrived in the cellar, a begoggled Troy was already jamming the helmet and specs onto the protesting Martian. I gratefully accepted my own from Jenkins – I had no desire to repeat the mind-warping experience that close proximity to the time tanks had induced the last time I’d been in there.

‘ Bombers three minutes away.’ The metallic voice paused, and in a new tone announced: ‘ You’re not getting out of this one, Professor. I’m handing in my resignation and leaving the building.’

‘You can’t leave the building, Delores!’ Quanderhorn yelled as we all lurched into the frightful chamber itself. ‘You’re completely synthetic.’

There was a horrible, crackling pause. ‘ Now you tell me!’

The goggles didn’t exactly black everything out – I could easily perceive the others and the outlines of the vast storage tanks. In the helmet there was mercifully no sound from those dread phantasms, but Quanderhorn’s voice came over loud and clear.

‘Troy, take the bucket over to that tank, and up the access ladder.’ I made out the blurred outline of the Professor as he grabbed a sturdy lever. ‘When I open it up, you’ll have to start bailing the time into the bucket for all you’re worth.’

‘Do you know?’ Guuuurk was staring down at his front. ‘I’d never realised my bottom was so extraordinarily dashed attractive! It’s usually round the back, you see.’

‘I’m on it, Pops!’ Troy shouted, shimmying lithely up the ladder.

He reached the top with astonishing speed, and I began to believe there could really be a chance we might, just might survive this.

Then the first bomb struck.

Although we didn’t technically hear it, it felt like we did, and the ground shook mightily under our feet.

‘Well, I’m luckier than you chaps!’ Guuuurk announced rather bitterly. ‘If I bend forward, I can now literally kiss my arse goodbye.’

A second, stronger tremor.

Cracks networked across the ceiling, and chunks of limestone and chalk dust started showering down on us.

Gemma slipped her hand into mine. Even though the circumstances were dire, I still felt that amazing electric frisson at the touch of it. I squeezed it back gently.

Then another, more violent blast.

Then another.

They were coming every few seconds now. Each one closer than the last, each one bringing bigger chunks crashing all around.

Troy yelled: ‘Pops! What are you waiting for? Pull the switch!’

The Professor’s hand was frozen on the lever. His whole body was shaking, shucking off clouds of chalk dust. Was I going insane, or was he actually laughing?

‘ What the devil is so funny, Quanderhorn?’ I screamed over the deafening avalanche.

‘To think, that I, of all people,’ he grinned bizarrely, ‘should finally run out of…

Note from Dr. Virginia Whyte to Brian. December 31st, 1952 – Iteration 65

Dearest B,

I know this may sound the most appalling cliché, but these really will be the last words I shall ever write.

Last night, I finally worked up the gumption to visit the cellar. As you know, Darius guards the access like Cerberus himself, but after some surreptitious nocturnal snooping, I found there is, indeed, a secret entrance.

No. I shan’t tell you how to find it – you must never, ever go down there.

You would never be the same again.

Can Q’horn have any notion what he’s done? The casual, unspeakable horror of it?

The lives unlived! The destinies unfulfilled!

I cannot stand by and let this continue. What I must do to myself is abominable. But I fear it’s the only way I can make myself strong enough to literally beat the clock. To stop the man I was meant to love.

This ends tonight.

To slay a monster I must, myself, become a monster.

Forgive me, Brian. If you could have seen them, you’d understand.

The children.

The poor, beautiful children I was meant to have with Darius. Who never got to be. In that life we should have had together.

Transcription of transmission from Advanced Lunar Station Q, translated by Gargantua: the Linguaphonic Quanderlator (Estimated Earth date: Saturday 5th January, 1952 – iteration 66)

TEE-POL: Hello? Hello? Is there any [PROFANITY EXPUNGED]there?

POL-TEE: This place is a [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] hole. Can only have been built by those Tellurian bastards.

TEE-POL: Shut your fetid crackhole! I’m trying to send a message, here!

POL-TEE: 400 years we spent repairing that bastard ship! Finally get it working, go out for ten minutes to forage supplies, some [PARTICULARLY LARGE SEXUAL ORGAN]’s nicked it! [26] Presumably, this is Mercurian years, which would be approximately 70 Earth years.

TEE-POL: I said I’m trying to send a distress message. To save our lives . If that’s all [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] right with you, your ‘majesty’.

POL-TEE: [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] you and [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] your [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] message

TEE-POL: Do you want to do it? Do you want to send the [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] message?

POL-TEE: What am I? Head of Interplanetary Diplomacy all of a sudden?

TEE-POL: Well, not ‘all of a sudden’ exactly, sputum brain – it’s the third badge on your [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] sleeve. Look, it says right there: ‘Mercurian [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] Diplomatic Corps.’

POL-TEE: Well they’d never let you in, would they? You’ve got no [PROFANITY EXPUNGED] diplomacy at all.