"Brian Lumley - Psychomech 03 - Psychamok" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

were as far removed from Thomas Schroeder's as the dark side of the moon. Krippner had been a
psychiatrist in a so-called 'remedial medicine unit' of the SS. Certain of his practices there had guaranteed
his name's later appearance on the world's most-wanted lists of war criminals. Some years after the war,
with the help of an organization known as Exodus, he had made his escape from Germany to England.
Wyatt, of sympathetic persuasions, had been recruited by Exodus in Germany while a student of psychiatry.
When Krippner's escape was planned, Wyatt was contacted and instructed to 'employ' the man and assist
with his absorption into his new identity and environment. There was no way he could refuse (Exodus
would take such a refusal very badly) but things would not be so bad. Krippner had been, still was, a
brilliant psychiatrist in his own right. There was a great deal Wyatt might learn from him . . .
And so, after his many years of fear, flight and evasion, Krippner settled in to work - ostensibly as a
gardener in the grounds of Wyatt's large but largely untended country home in Sussex - and at first he had
seemed more than grateful. He displayed his gratitude, again ostensibly, by slowly constructing Psychomech
in an empty upstairs room of Wyatt's house.
Psychomech was to be the culmination of many years of research and experiment, and through the
machine Wyatt's fortunes would be restored to their previous standing. The German did not tell Wyatt that
Psychomech was an unfinished Nazi project to create supermen - and that he, Otto Krippner, intended to
be the very first of such!
By the time Psychomech was completed in 1976, Amira Hannes and her network of Israeli bloodhounds
had already tracked down many of Krippner's contemporaries; it was only a matter of time before they got
him, too. Exodus got in touch with Krippner, advised him to move on. Wyatt was also contacted, told to
waste little time seeing Krippner on his way and covering the Nazi's tracks.
He did no such thing but used Psychomech to murder Krippner, weighed his body down and slipped it into a
deep, dark, tree-shaded pool in the grounds of his home. This way Krippner could never be tracked down;
Wyatt's connection with Exodus would never be discovered -
- All of which occurred three years before Wyatt's second affair with Terri Garrison.

In 1980 Terri arranged a meeting between her lover and her husband, and Garrison's ESP at once
pinpointed Wyatt as a crucial factor in his future. In short, he 'knew' that Wyatt was the key to the
Machine, 'knew' also that the psychiatrist actually had possession of Psychomech.
Wyatt was still desperately in need of money. He claimed that while Psychomech was incomplete and in
need of much more work yet, nevertheless its potential was enormous. It would repay any investment many
times over. If Garrison were willing to fund the project, he would surely reap a large share of the eventual
profits. Garrison did better than that: he employed an expert in micro-electronics to strip Psychomech down
and replace bulky, obsolete and dangerous parts with new and compact high performance components.
When in 1981 the new Psychomech was ready to be tested, Garrison demanded that he himself be the
guinea pig. This suited the illicit lovers very well. Their original plan had been this: that when Psychomech
became a success, Terri would desert Garrison for Wyatt. They would manage a living on Psychomech's
commercial earnings. But now . . . Wyatt had used Psychomech once to commit a murder. Why not twice?
Terri's inheritance would be vast.
As for the Machine itself, Psychomech was supposed to function like this:
The patient would be caused to dream, to experience nightmares born of his own wokst fears. This would
be achieved by the stimulation of his brain's fear-centres. Psychomech would blow up his neuroses and
psychoses out of all proportion, simultaneously supplying him with the physical (more properly mental)
strength to overcome these fears. The conflicts within the patient's mind would be utterly real to him;
having subconsciously 'defeated' his personal, inner demons, he would discover upon awakening that the
conscious manifestations of his neuroses were similarly vanquished.
And indeed the Machine might well effect just such cures - but that was merely a spin-off from its primary
function, which was this:
That the subject's mind be utterly cleansed of all fear, and that his ego and potential ESP abilities - latent in
all men - be expanded almost infinitely. So that he would emerge a fearless mental giant, a near-superman!