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

The mad dream of an insane Fuehrer? Perhaps . . .

Garrison went on to Psychomech on a Sunday morning in June 1981. Certain precautions had been taken to
ensure that the 'experiment' would not be interrupted; surprisingly, Garrison himself had been responsible
for the arrangements. Willy Koenig had been sent on holiday to Hamburg; Suzi the Dobermann pinscher -
Garrison's 'familiar' - was safely lodged in the kennels at Midhurst. Be that as it may, both Koenig and Suzy
knew the exact moment that Garrison went on to the Machine, and they would later hear and answer his
mental SOS when Wyatt tried to kill him.
Wyatt's method was simple - or should have been. He would magnify fear-stimulation to the full and cut the
Machine's relief systems to their minimum. Garrison would be driven mad and the Machine would not be
able to help him; its failsafe would not function; eventually, in paroxysms of absolute terror, he would
expire. The log of the experiment would be falsified, the controls re-set. It would all be seen as a terrible
accident; Wyatt would sigh, shrug and point out that Garrison had known the dangers, had known that
Psychomech was, after all, only a prototype . . .
But Garrison did not go insane and he did not die. While his wife and her lover sated themselves, he
reached out from his mechanically-induced nightmares and took control of Psychomech with his mind,
turning certain of the Machine's energies to his own advantage. The battle was joined, unendurable mental
horror against almost limitless psychic strength! Something had to give, and because Psychomech was a
machine that something must be the flesh-and-blood Garrison himself.
Unless -
The pact! That pact he had made with Thomas Schroeder, dead these eight years. Schroeder was there
now in Garrison's bloated nightmares just as he had been in that much earlier dream in strife-torn Belfast,
and his plea now was that same plea he had made then: that Garrison let him in\ Even Psychomech could
not destroy both of them.
Garrison capitulated, freely admitted Schroeder into his mind, subsumed the long-dead German's
disembodied psyche within his own id, his own being.
After that. . .
Hitler's advisers had envisaged a machine to turn ordinary men into supermen. But what would happen if
the subject was a man whose powers of ESP were already honed to an extraordinary edge? What if,
instead of one mind returning from such a voyage, a multimind should emerge - a psychic sentience
expanded to almost cosmic proportions? Superman - ?
Or God?
Not God, no - not even a god - but a man with near-godlike powers. This was the Garrison/Schroeder
which Psychomech had created. And this was the Garrison/ Schroeder who freed himself from the
Machine to find the lovers desperately, fearfully coupling in their bed - find them out in all their treachery.
Then . . . miracles and madness!
By the will of Garrison/Schroeder, Vicki Maler was brought from Schloss Zonigen to England and returned
to life. But it was Schroeder's will alone which transferred the living cancer that killed her into
Gareth Wyatt and Terri Garrison! And it was Garrison, humane as he had always been, who ended it by
destroying both of them in an instant.

Outside Wyatt's house when all was done, Garrison/ Schroeder and Vicki found Koenig waiting. Suzy was
there, too, but she was dead; Wyatt had blown her apart with a shotgun. No longer blind - golden-eyed and
awesome - Garrison/Schroeder had looked at Suzy, commanding her that she be whole again and live. And
Suzy lived.
And Koenig, too - the ever-faithful Koenig - he also was rewarded. He and Garrison/Schroeder embraced,
and when it was done Koenig's clothes fell empty to the earth.
Then, as the house of Wyatt and all it contained melted down behind them and became slag, Garrison/
Schroeder/Koenig, Vicki and Suzy moved on towards their futures . . .
Resume Two: