Psychomech (29 page)

Even then only a woman in love or completely besotted would have believed him. His solution was simply to lie, but in a way which especially lent itself to Terri’s susceptibility, her feelings—or lack of feelings—for her mother, and the steadily widening gap between them. This alone gave credibility to his story, which was that Terri’s mother, not Wyatt himself, had made all the running in their affair, and that the affair itself had been literally forced upon him. She had professed her love for him, or rather her need, which at First, along with her blatant sexuality, had repulsed him. She was after all a married woman, and the mother of his one true love at that! Seeing how her obvious lusting after him had shocked him, she had then threatened to destroy both him and Terri, break them up completely, ruin their chances beyond any possible hope of recovery. She had known he needed money for an important project—something to do with a machine, experimental psychiatry far removed from any orthodox practice—and promised him whatever financial assistance he required. He had not known that she would never be able to keep the bargain, that in any case her funds were quite insufficient.

What she required in return was… well, Terri could well imagine that. An affair, of course. She had had many such and usually grew bored very quickly with her lovers; doubtless it would be the same with Wyatt. Meanwhile, she would not interfere with his courting her daughter—on the contrary, she would attempt to sway Harry Miller in Wyatt’s favour—and Terri would never need to know anything of it. He had believed her… after all, what woman would be that much of a bitch?

He should have known better, of course, but she had made it plain to him that this was the only way he could ever realize his ambition, which all along had been to marry Terri and make her his own forever. Surely Terri must know this?—that he loved her as no other woman had ever been loved? Surely she had felt it when they were together, in the perfection of their love-making, the sheer joy of their bodies coupling?

All of these lies Wyatt told, but in such a way that Terri was slowly able to assimilate and believe them, as any woman will who hears lies from the man she loves.

In a little while she had found herself admitting her own feelings, began telling him she did not love Garrison, was inviting (albeit without a single spoken word) a continuation of their love affair. And in Terri Garrison’s weakness, her future, Wyatt’s, Koenig’s, Garrison’s own and the futures of many others—indeed the future of the world itself—were clinched. It was the key piece in a fantastic jigsaw puzzle, the one piece about which ail the others would fall surely and horrifically into place.

But even then Wyatt had had to push it one step further. If only Terri could leave Garrison, he said, they could be as they had been before; better, for now that she knew the ‘truth’ of matters they could simply live out the rest of their lives in total happiness together. As for money: what did that matter? He still had his estate, in need of some attention, true, but still a valuable property. He would sell it, buy a smaller place, bank the surplus and they could live (albeit sparingly) on the interest. He was an intelligent man; he still had a small clientèle, a list of patients; he would work and provide for her. They would not starve, far from it. And there were certain projects which, with the right backing, could still make his fortune. Somehow, somewhere, he would find that backing. If only she would come away with him and be his.

In making this suggestion there was a great risk and Wyatt knew he took a chance. But—besotted as she was, still Terri was no fool. Wyatt had hoped this would be the case and breathed a silent sigh of relief when she rejected the idea of running away with him. No, she would not leave Richard Garrison, for that would be an act of the utmost folly.

For Garrison was rich. Richer than Wyatt might ever suspect. Her life as his wife was one of the sheerest luxury, even though it often left her bored, with too much time on her hands and too little to do with it. No, leaving him was out of the question, at least at this point of time. But… what if Wyatt’s projects should prove successful? If money was all he needed, well, perhaps that could be arranged.

Her plan was this:

Richard Garrison had the golden touch. Every venture he undertook made money for him as if by magic. Now if Wyatt could interest him in this special project of his—this machine? Psychomech?—and if indeed it proved to be the winner he promised, why, then he would grow rich in his own right!

The first step would be c meeting, ostensibly accidental, between the-two men. There would be no need for Garrison to know him as the Wyatt, not immediately, but from the very first the two should seem to have a great deal in common. For example, Garrison was especially interested in parapsychology, and so Wyatt would do well to acquaint himself with the various terms and facets of all such matters; the other side, as it were, of his own mainly orthodox psychological and psychiatric training; and so on.

So it was that in a black-sheeted bed in Wyatt’s house in Hampshire, the seed of a meeting between himself and Garrison germinated and took root; and then, almost an afterthought on his part, though he did not let Terri see it, he made love to her yet again.

And in a triple-padlocked room close by, Psychomech, crouching down on its gleaming steel and plastic haunches, sat still and silent and waiting…

Garrison was temporarily exhausted. The trip to the Harz had been much to his satisfaction but, as usual, the extensive ESP-tests had drained him. On top of this he had missed Suzy more than usual; also, Vicki Maler’s presence at Garrison’s Retreat had been almost overpowering.

Vicki…

Once, shortly after marrying Terri, Garrison and Koenig had gone to Schloss Zonigen in the Swiss Alps. Ostensibly he was at Garrison’s Retreat, but he had desired to see Vicki, if only to reassure himself that she was… there. It was a mistake, a nightmare, and he had vowed never to go back. Even thinking back on it was nightmarish.

… The tunnel with its strip-lighting, cutting like a glowing neon tube through the heart of the ice and rock; the fur boots, hooded parkas, fur-lined gauntlets; the little car on rails that sped them to Vicki’s resting place; the numbered niche (2139) in the rock wall, where her body lay in frozen suspension, still riddled with the cancer which had killed her but rigid now and frozen as the emaciated shell containing it.

He had only been able to see her face, full of repose but behind which he sensed an agony—possibly his own. And the tears freezing into tiny marbles on his cheeks. And her frost-rimed tube sliding back into its niche as he turned away. The memory still haunted him…

This time, however, upon his return from the Harz to the house in Sussex, Terri was so obviously pleased to see him and so full of concern for his weariness that he was soon his old self again.

Of course she wanted to show off some of her new clothes. There were several parties they must attend in March and April, and one in particular at the home of Doris Quatrain, a notorious socialite friend who lived in Mayfair. This was where Garrison was to meet Gareth Wyatt, as Terri and the psychiatrist had prearranged, and this is how that meeting came about:

Willy Koenig had driven them into the city in the Mercedes, going off on his own as soon as he had delivered them to the house in Mayfair. Three large rooms had been given over to the party itself, though as usual the at present‘Miss’ Quatrain’s house (she had often been a ‘Mrs’ but was free right now) was completely open to the comings and goings, and occasional goings-on, of her guests> There was a lot of good eating, ‘chic’ (or to Garrison’s mind ‘banal’) conversation, and a deal of hard drinking. He avoided the latter, securing for himself a half-bottle of mediocre Italian brandy specially provided for him by the hostess, and he and Terri found themselves seats upon a corner lounge where after a while they were joined by several of her debutantish ex-schoolgirl friends, each now grown to essentially sensual womanhood: company which only a few short years ago Garrison would have found fascinating but uncomfortable and difficult, which now affected him not at all. Or at worst merely amused him.

At once he relaxed, allowing his hyper-sensitive perceptions full range to drink in all the strangeness of these new female pseudo-colours and—textures, and after a while Terri went off to chat with Doris Quatrain herself. Fast on the heels of her departure Garrison sensed the approach of a new presence whose silhouette was tail, slim and very male. Quite uninvited, a stranger had joined him and Terri’s girlfriends in their corner, and whoever he was his effect upon the women was both instant and remarkable. Their chatter momentarily died away, only to resume instantly and simultaneously, louder and even more animated than before, which Garrison could only take to signal the newcomer’s imposing looks or status.

Then, sensing a hand held out in his direction, he grasped it and said: ‘Garrison, Richard Garrison.’

‘Oh, I know who you are of course, Mr Garrison,’ the stranger’s voice was deep and attractive, ‘and if I may say so I admire you. And I pray you’ll excuse this completely unsolicited approach, but… well, knowing a great deal about you, I believe we may have a lot in common.’

‘Ah!’ Garrison smiled. He was not absolutely sure he enjoyed the stranger’s self-confidence, or for that matter his manner of approach. Perhaps he could bring him down just a little—but without being offensive. ‘You know much of me and we have a deal in common? Then you can only be… my tax inspector?’

The ladies laughed a little but in their way sensed that their presence was now superfluous. There was something deeper here, outside their scope. They began to excuse themselves and drift away, and soon the two men were alone. ‘My name is Wyatt,’ said the stranger, ‘and I recently became a member of the Society of Parapsychology here in London. Which is where I learned of you. They seem to hold you in great esteem.’

‘I’ve been to a couple of meetings,’ Garrison answered. ‘They talk a lot, drink a lot more, do very little else. Frankly they bore me, as I’m sure they’ll eventually bore you. I do not intend to resume my membership.’

‘You’re very frank,’ the newcomer laughed, ‘and that’s to say the least—but it’s what I expected of you. And I may say that I already agree with you—about them being boring, I mean. They are, most boring. Thinkers’ and speakers, yes, but not doers.’

Garrison found him interesting. His voice, without being sonorous, was almost hypnotic, imparting along with his smell (his human smell, strong behind a thin cosmetic film) the image of a man of say… perhaps forty-eight or—nine years, but looking much younger. Slim, tall, with chestnut hair probably tinted to keep hidden the emerging grey in his well-groomed locks, this Wyatt was handsome.

His handshake, too, had seemed to agree with all of this, so that Garrison was now convinced he had a complete mental picture of the man. Physically—he guessed he would be vigorous. The depth of his voice and the strength of his handshake seemed to assure it. And if he was right, well, that would explain Wyatt’s effect upon the women. Whoever and whatever he was, this man would always be devastating in female company. That was why the girls had drifted away. It had been a mutual understanding between them. To stay would have been to vie for his attention. Later, perhaps, when the booze was flowing that much faster and the veneer of decorum was fast decaying, then they might return. But meanwhile Garrison could easily check the conclusions of his heightened perceptions.

‘Mr Wyatt, you realize of course that I’m quite blind.’

‘Your pardon? Blind? But certainly I realize it.’ The other’s voice was now puzzled, mildly cautious. ‘Have I said or done something to offend or—’

‘No, no—nothing like that—but you said of our colleagues at the ESP Society that they were thinkers and speakers but not doers. I am blind, but at the same time I am a doer.’

‘So I’ve heard. That was why, chiefly, I wanted to speak to you. All my life I have been interested in psychiatry and psychology, the normal—and occasionally abnormal—mental processes, but only recently in parapsychology. It is, so to speak, the other side of the coin. And I, too, would like to be a doer.’

Something clicked in Garrison’s head.

Wyatt… Psychiatry…

Connections were made but—he ignored them. Suddenly he felt inclined to show off. ‘May I demonstrate the sort of thing I can do?’ he asked.

‘I would be delighted!’ Wyatt leaned closer.

‘I know nothing of you, agreed?’

‘We never before met,’ Wyatt nodded.

‘And you agree that I am blind?* Garrison lifted his blinkers an inch or two, let the other see his eyes, heard his sharp intake of breath. ‘Very well. Then let me describe you—at least your physical exterior.’ And he quickly told Wyatt all that he had discerned or perceived of him. Finally, as he finished, he quite spontaneously added: ‘Also, your main concern in speaking to me tonight was not with parapsychology. You attach far greater importance to our meeting than the mere discussion or demonstration of ESP ability.’

And again the sharp intake of breath.

For a split second Wyatt was off-guard, his barriers down, his mind racing in a sort of mental neutral but yet’ throwing out impressions which flooded into Garrison’s receptive areas in a veritable torrent. A series of vivid, fleeting mental images came and went in bright flashes within the blind man’s mind as he sat, apparently placid, facing the stranger. He caught at them, seized upon these chaotic fragments from Wyatt’s inner being.

There was money, a good deal of it. And MME, Miller Micro-Electronics. And a picture of Wyatt himself as Garrison had so accurately described him, but successful now and smiling, however anxiously. There was Terri, too, unimportant in the great kaleidoscope of telepathic impressions. And there was something else, something that came and went so quickly that Garrison almost missed it. But it was important. So important that he grasped for it, reached after it with his mind like a man with a butterfly net after some rare species. He caught it—

—And in the next instant was reeling, his mind spinning and blurring like the colours on a roulette wheel!