Milton Blake explained: ‘We’ll put you into deep trance and feed in the information. That should take five, perhaps six hours. Then we’ll take you into the transmission area and induce the dreaming phase by means of an Indexer. When dreaming starts you’ll be linked neurologically to NELLIE and, hopefully, we should get something through on the display. We’ll tape everything so that you can see for yourself when you return. How does it sound?’
‘So long as you don’t slip in a dose of STP to ginger me up.’
‘No STP,’ Blake said. ‘At what point will you be going into mythic projection?’ he asked casually.
‘Perhaps I won’t,’ said Queghan. ‘It isn’t an electric light you can switch on and off.’
‘I realize that – though it’ll be a pity if you don’t. To achieve the optimum effect we need to combine neuron processing and mythic projection. Your brain patterns will be monitored during transmission and the system is capable of accepting every level and fluctuation of electrochemical activity.’
The mythographer said, ‘Let’s hope I am.’
Blake was about to smile and changed his mind. ‘Is there a risk?’
‘There’s always a risk.’
‘In what way?’
‘I might not come back. The Neuron Processor won’t be much help if I’m stuck on the other side of the interface in noman’s-land. Mythic projection will get me there and it has to get me back.’
‘We could bring you round quickly enough.’
‘Thanks for the offer but it won’t do any good. Nothing on Earth IVn is going to get me back if I don’t do it myself.’
Blake frowned and said after a moment, ‘But physically you’ll still be here – your body will remain in the transmission area.’
‘My body will be,’ Queghan said, ‘but I won’t.’
‘Look, Chris, suppose there is a problem getting you back, a delay of some kind; how long do we keep you linked to the Processor? I mean …’ he fumbled for the best way to express himself ‘… will it be safe to move you from the transmission area?’
‘It won’t matter. Mythic projection doesn’t operate in the normal spacetime continuum. On my time-scale I might be away hours, days, months, even years, while in the transmission area only a few minutes will have elapsed.’ His face was austere, almost cadaverous; suddenly he smiled and the network of creases at the corners of his eyes deepened. Blake had the uncomfortable feeling that Queghan could read his innermost thought, as if in those pale eyes the substratum of reality was plainly to be seen. The mythographer said, ‘I’ve been into mythic projection before, Milton. I’m aware of the risk.’
‘I don’t want a corpse on my hands,’ Blake said with a kind of mournful mock humour.
‘You won’t have a corpse. The body will be alive though permanently in coma. If I don’t get back.’
Blake thought, He speaks of his body as if it didn’t belong to him. I don’t know if I really like this man: it’s hard to like someone you don’t understand. I wonder if he understands himself?
Queghan said, ‘I see now what you meant about Dagon. Single-minded, keen intelligence, filled with purpose.’
‘He’s a cold fish. No sense of humour.’
‘But he’s on to something.’
‘Do you think so?’ Blake said, alerted. ‘You didn’t sound altogether convinced. You don’t think this machine of his is just a fanciful invention?’
‘I’m not sure about the machine. But Dagon’s namesake, the medieval alchemist, is a pure mythic figure: scholar, philosopher-scientist, lexicographer and a nuclear physicist into the bargain. It wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t a geneticist on the side.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Then the parallel with Dr Francis Dagon would be perfect. Dagon combines linguistic studies with molecular biology and it would complete the picture nicely if Dagon ben Shem Tov enjoyed tampering with genetic structure.’
‘Rather a lot to ask of a 13th century alchemist, philosopher-scientist or not.’
‘So is changing lead into gold,’ Queghan pointed out. ‘If he had the ability to construct a particle accelerator from instructions that had come down through the ages by word of mouth he must have been the greatest genius of all time. Newton and Einstein and Hawking wouldn’t even rate.’
Something occurred to Milton Blake and he laughed. ‘Perhaps he wasn’t of Old Earth – maybe “a god from space and time” as Dr Dagon believes.’ He chuckled at such a preposterous notion.
‘That’s always a possibility,’ the mythographer said quietly.
‘Chris, this is pure fantasy.’ Blake continued to smile. ‘Dagon wasn’t serious when he made that suggestion.’
‘You think not?’ Queghan stood up. His lean angular body and the rake of his shoulders were uncompromising in their severity; the spirit of the man seemed to burn like a cold clear flame. He turned to look at Blake and his eyes were so pale that they appeared to be transparent. ‘We shouldn’t rule out any possibility until it’s been fully investigated. I don’t know how much of Dagon’s thesis is historically valid and how much is religious dogma and superstition. Perhaps there really was a machine in Biblical times, somewhere in the ancient past.’ Then he said, ‘But which one?’
‘Are there more than one?’
‘Many more. An infinite number of mythical pasts,’ Queghan said.
*
The transmission area was bathed in a greenish glow. The patient had been wheeled in and lay on the padded table in a closely-grouped nest of consoles which were strung together by a spaghetti of multi-coloured cables. The squat grey Indexer unit on its trolley was attached by greased electrodes to the patient’s wrists and temples and a portable EEG scribbled out his heartbeat on a moving ribbon of paper. Nearby, holding clipboards to their chests, two technicians stood watching the instrument panels and noting any fluctuation in cardiovascular and respiratory functions. Everything seemed to be in order.
Milton Blake was in the observation room sitting in front of three-dimensional display. The room was above the transmission area so that it was possible to look down through the angled observation window and keep a close watch on the patient’s condition and changing reaction. Blake hid his nervousness by making continual minor adjustments to the display controls, knowing quite well that they were properly set, and then checked again that the VTR facility was on-line to record picture and sound. Something nagged at him with infuriating persistency and he kept thinking, If anything goes wrong how the hell do I get him back? He’s here at my request – I made the decision and he takes the risk …
Dagon came silently into the observation room in his para-chair, controlling it by means of a small joystick in the right arm of the chair. His body was held rigidly upright in the harness, incapable of independent movement. He was smoking a long thin cigar, holding it lightly in his hairless fingers. He positioned the chair in front of the display and looked down into the transmission area. He drew breath. ‘The subject seems comfortable. Are we ready to start?’
‘Just about,’ Blake said. He spoke through the talk-back to the technicians below. ‘How does everything look?’
‘No problems. The readings are normal.’
‘Is NELLIE behaving herself?’
One of the technicians scanned the dials on the Neuron Processor and reported, ‘She’s okay. Shall we link up?’
Blake breathed out slowly. His hands were clasped together like a black knot in the lap of his pristine white coat. ‘Let’s do it.’
The technician connected a transductor to a socket in the transmission table and pressed a series of buttons. ‘We have a reading.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Stage III.’
Blake glanced at the wall chronometer. ‘What would you say – five minutes?’
‘About that,’ the technician replied matter-of-factly.
Dagon gazed down through the observation window. He drew on the cigar and let the smoke trickle out of his nostrils. Blake was distracted into wondering how it was possible to smoke through a respiratory implant; where did the smoke go to? He looked at the chronometer again and explained unnecessarily, ‘When he reaches delta sleep he’ll start to dream and the display should begin to register brain images.’ He said into the talk-back, ‘Advise when REM activity begins.’
The greenish light made everything below seem as if it was underwater. The patient looked relaxed, sleeping peacefully. Beneath the cushioning on the transmission table an inlaid circuit of germanium picked up and transmitted his neurological landscape and fed it via the Neuron Processor to the display. Already, in deep trance, he had descended through Stages I and II and was now approaching the most active level of dreaming sleep, Stage IV, at which point an electric shock would trigger the brain chemical acetylcholine. This would boost the delta wave rhythms to a peak and prolong the dreaming phase. The purpose of the Indexer, attached to the patient by electrodes, was to induce the wave rhythms through alpha to delta and monitor their varying strengths.
Blake had no qualms about this phase of the operation: it was routine and he’d performed it hundreds of times on as many patients. Few of them suffered any ill-effects, but then they had been ‘normal’ people who didn’t possess the gift of mythic projection. This was the first time he’d tried it on a Myth Technologist.
Dagon said abruptly, ‘How long can we keep him under?’
‘Three hours.’
‘Will that be long enough?’
‘It’ll have to be.’ Blake wasn’t prepared to risk Queghan’s life for the sake of an experiment, even if it discovered the secret of the Holy Grail.
‘We have REM activity,’ one of the technicians reported. ‘And we have a Stage IV reading.’
Blake looked down on the patient and saw the rapid movement of the eyelids, indicating that he was descending to the delta level.
‘Has the acetylcholine been triggered?’
‘Not yet.’
Blake touched the controls in front of him, even though the display was blank and impassive. ‘Come on, come on,’ he said under his breath. He looked at the chronometer and tapped his foot.
Dr Francis Dagon hadn’t taken his eyes off the patient. He sat imperturbably, occasionally blowing a plume of grey smoke into the close still atmosphere of the observation room. Nothing would ever disturb or upset him, Blake thought, and he jumped as one of the technicians said:
‘Acetylcholine has been released.’
‘Check pulse, heart rate, respiration and blood pressure,’ Blake said at once. He waited while the technicians checked the readings and made notes on the clipboards.
‘Adrenal level is high.’
‘What is it?’
‘472 mg per 100 ml.’
‘He must be responding,’ Blake said to Dagon. ‘The acetylcholine stimulates the pituitary and adrenal glands which pump hormones into the system.’ His broad handsome face had tightened with concentration.
‘REM increasing,’ said one of the technicians.
The patient’s eyelids were now flickering rapidly and his body had begun to move restlessly on the padded table. There were flecks of saliva at the corners of his mouth.
‘Pulse rate dropping.’
‘What’s the central brain temperature?’
‘Rather high but remaining constant.’
‘We’re into Stage IV,’ said the other technician.
‘We’re not getting anything,’ Blake said impatiently.
‘Pulse rate still dropping.’
‘Come on,’ Blake said. ‘Come on.’
‘Respiratory rate falling.’
‘Adrenal level increasing.’
Something moved on the display, a coloured light. It flickered and was gone.
‘Is the VTR running?’ Dagon inquired.
Milton Blake nodded, his eyes fixed on the screen. One of the technicians said, ‘Something’s happening to him.’ His voice was uncertain as though he had been caught off-balance.
Blake looked quickly through the angled observation window. He felt as jumpy as a cat. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
The other technician said, ‘My God.’
‘What is it?’
‘His hands,’ the technician said. ‘You can see through his hands. You can see the bones—’
Dr Francis Dagon craned his neck forward, looking down intently into the transmission area. ‘The man’s skull is visible,’ he remarked. ‘His flesh is becoming transparent.’
Blake said through the talk-back, ‘Watch those readings. Report immediately any fluctuations outside the norm. What’s the adrenal level?’
‘510.’
‘An interesting physiological condition,’ said Dagon, craning forward. ‘Has it happened with any of your other patients?’
Blake was about to reply when the display came to life: an image had appeared in three-dimensional colour. He said through the talk-back, ‘We have something.’
‘I don’t like this,’ one of the technicians said.
Dagon turned to Blake and said conversationally, ‘He seems to be having a fit. Is this normal?’
The patient’s head was thrown back so that the transparent musculature of his neck was visible. There was foam on his lips and his eyes were now open, the eyeballs upturned into the head, white and blindly staring. His limbs were rigid, jerking stiffly as spasms of uncontrollable energy passed through them like bursts of electrical current. The face and hands were now completely translucent, displaying the bones, muscles and blood vessels within.
Both technicians were staring anxiously towards the observation room. Blake said, ‘Watch those levels. Report any deviations outside the safety parameters.’
‘Is he all right do you suppose?’ Dagon asked, relighting his cigar. ‘Will we have to abort the experiment?’ His interest seemed purely academic.
Blake adjusted the controls on the display and brought the image into fine focus. ‘I hope all this is worth it.’
‘Are we to proceed?’ Dr Francis Dagon said with faint surprise.
Blake took out his handkerchief and wiped the palms of his hands. ‘You wanted mythic projection and that’s what you’ve got,’ he said, and then through the talk-back, ‘We’re on vision and recording. Watch those levels.’