“Do you believe her?”
“If I’m in the same room as her, probably.”
Randi chuckled. There had been some discrete experiments going on. Put a subject in the same room as Lugasharmanaska, measure their initial reaction to the succubus and then watch as that changed. Their prejudice started to soften within five minutes and by 30 minutes at most, they were friendly. “What do you think? Mind control?”
“Can’t be. We know roughly why their mind control works, they have the ability to entangle pathways in our brains using a bio-generated electrical field as a carrier wave. Your work with Julie and kitten shows we can do the same only we can’t generate the bio-electric field as a carrier. We also know that electrically conductive headgear blocks out the signal. Humiliating that isn’t it. For years people who were being persecuted by demons tried to warn us and tell us how to block the signals and we laughed at them. Ridiculed them, then locked them up and doped them to the eyeballs. The tinfoil beanie became a symbol of cranks and nut-cases – and all along they were right. Anyway, we’ve all been scrupulous about wearing our tinfoil beanies yet Lugasharmanaska gets the same reactions every time. Must be something else. We’ll keep trying until we get there.”
“Nicely switched away from the subject Robert. Now, do you believe her?”
Robert O’Shea thought for a second. “No. That stuff about breeding with humans can’t be true. We’re different species and different species can’t breed together, that’s a basic definition. The question is why is she lying? And if she is, why don’t we just hand her over to Doctor Surlethe and let him get some real information from her.”
“She might not be lying Robert. Just because she isn’t telling us the truth doesn’t mean that she’s lying. She may honestly believe that what she is telling us is true. It may be true, its just that we don’t understand what she is saying.” Randi paused. “I’ve had that with people who honestly believed they had psychic abilities. They were so convinced they were telling the truth that they just couldn’t believe there were other explanations. Parents were the worst. They got the idea their child was ‘special’ in some way, and which parents don’t believe that, and couldn’t accept that there were rational reasons why the kids were getting the results they were. We had one little girl whose parents honestly believed she had X-ray vision, even when we filmed her moving her head as she read a book ‘blindfolded’. Once we had sealed off her normal vision, her ‘ability’ stopped dead. And don’t get me started on dowsers.
“Look, I’m a conjuror, not a scientist but I’ll say this. Luga’s given us something to work with. It may be true, it may not be, but its something we can test. We have a theory from her, we can test that theory against reality and come up with the disconnects. Then we can learn by explaining those disconnects. And the first disconnect is how everybody feels warm and fuzzy towards Lugasharmanaska when she is, quite literally, a demon from hell.”
Randi stopped and knocked on a door. There was a mumbled ‘Come-in’ from inside.
“Norman, how are you settling in? And how do your cats like the Pentagon?”
“They’re getting overfed already. And I didn’t know the Secretary of State likes cats.”
“That’s a well-kept Washington secret. Did all your stuff get here safely?”
“Sure did, I’m getting it set up now. Any chance of meeting Lugasharmanaska?”
“Not at the moment, you can watch her but we’re trying to keep a limit on who actually sees her. She seems to have an uncanny effect on people around her.”
“I don’t see why; I’ve seen her pictures. She looks like something out of a nightmare. But then given the habits of the Succubi, I suppose she should look gross.”
“What do you mean Norman?”
“Succubi are supposed to mate with humans to collect male sperm. Then mate with their male equivalents, the Incubi and transfer that sperm to them. Incubi then mate with human females and impregnate them with that sperm. I guess that’s about as close to a dictionary definition of yukkiness as we’re ever going to get.”
Randi turned to O’Shea who was standing in the door with his mouth hanging open. “Well, it is a different dimension from ours, Robert. But that might explain how the Nephilim Lugasharmanaska was talking about could arise. They’re not hybrid human-demons, they’re corrupted humans somehow. Score one for the Succubus.”
“I’d rather not. The thought of waking up next to that thing is just about the most horrible thought I can imagine.” O’Shea paused for a second. “Except waking up next to my ex-wife I guess. Thank’s Norman, those were mental pictures I could have done without. My next week’s sleep is likely to be permanently ruined.”
“I aim to please. Doctor Randi…”
“It’s James, Norman. And I’ve never been any sort of Doctor. You want to be formal, you could call me The Amazing Randi if you like, but James will do just fine.” Randi gave Baines a gentle grandfatherly smile.
“James, where are we going from here?”
“Lugasharmanaska gave us some clues on how to open a portal to hell. I’m going to get my people together and we’re going to try it. If it works, score two for the Succubus, if it doesn’t we’ll learn from finding out why. By the way, spread the word, Doctor Surlethe is on his way to Baghdad. The Army is collecting corpses of baldricks for him but the Air Force won’t fly them over here. Dead baldricks decompose pretty fast and the smell is dreadful. Even through a body bag so the Air Force boys won’t have their nice clean transports fouled up by them. So, if dead baldricks won’t come to Surlethe, Surlethe will have to go to the dead baldricks.”
Randi left and went down to the corridor. Outside the conference room his team was using as a laboratory, four armed Marines were on guard. That was new but when Randi went inside, he could see why. The room was stacked with packages wrapped in green plastic. Small packages, rectangular in shape, about two pounds each Randi guessed. He had a sudden premonition that had nothing whatsoever to do with pseudo-science that smoking in this room would be a very bad idea. There was other equipment around, boxes, odd shapes and two vicious looking rifles.
“Sir, General Schatten will be with us immediately Sir.” Randi nodded. In the background, he could hear music playing, Sheryl Crowe’s voice sounding incongruous amongst the electronics, weapons and piles of high explosive.
These, in the days when Heaven is failing. The days when earths foundations fled They follow their military calling And now they fight to save our dead
And now they fight to save our dead.
Their shoulders hold the sky suspended They stand and earth’s foundations hold Whom God abandoned these defended And they saved the sum of things today.
And they saved the sum of things today.
“I hope you don’t mind Sir.” kitten was stretched out on a couch, her boyfriend sitting beside her. “Some music helps me relax.
“No problem kitten. You know what’s going to happen here?” kitten shook her head.
“This room is shielded against electromagnetic radiation so anything we pick up is you linking to hell.” The scientist spoke carefully. When he’d got his PhD (a highly classified one as it happened, in electromagnetic propagation which was a euphemism for some of the more spectacular aspects of electronic warfare), he’d never envisaged working on anything like this. “We’re running those signals through a massive amplifier and blasting them out. According to our information, we push enough power into the transmission and the visions you can experience will be converted to a real portal that we can step though into hell itself. And step out of to get back here.”
He was interrupted by the military members of the group snapping to attention. General Schatten had entered with an Army Major in tow. He returned the salutes and looked around at the room with satisfaction. “I see the Czechs came through with the Semtex then. This is Major Warhol, he’ll be training the A-teams who’ll be organizing the insurgency in Hell. Major, this is the team trying to get through for your people.”