Watson, Ian - Novel 10 by Deathhunter (v1.1)

walls, so that being in here was like being in some
large rectangular lung which breathed through silent, hidden air ducts.
                 The
machine consisted of the waterbed which Bekker had described. Within its strong
pine frame it was raised off the ground on rubber-buffered, insulated legs, and
entirely surrounded by a delicate filigree Faraday cage which could block out
any electromagnetic radiation from outside, or isolate any radiation arising
from within. So much for the ‘harem grille’ notion! It occurred to Jim to
wonder whether Weinberger had been sleeping inside the
                 Faraday
cage for many months prior to his enforced retirement with the current switched on as a way of insulating and isolating
himself from the power that he feared. Perhaps this had contributed in some
obscure way to the onset of his illness!
                 Using
the authority of the House to over-ride Public Disposal, and with a waiver
signed by Weinberger, Jim had had no difficulty in entering Weinberger’s former
abode to remove whatever he chose.
                 With
the aid of an attendant from the House he had also brought back the polarisable
glass screens which Weinberger had told him he would find stacked in the
bedroom, as he already knew from Bekker. These were actually adapted
scene-screens. Bolted together around the sides and roof of the cage, these
screens would no longer display illusions of African savannah or Amazonian
forest. They acted instead either as a perfectly clear five-fold window, or
else they could be rendered opaque. Then, from inside the cage, they became a
maze of mirrors reflecting mirrors. So much for the sex tape idea! Though, of
course, one could always readjust the screens . . .
                 A
hooded optic fibre periscope allowed one to spy into the cage from outside
while the glass walls were opaque. Two tiny automatic cameras were mounted on
silver rods inside. A drip-feed led from a tiny vacuum flask, looking like a
spout for feeding humming birds on the wing. This flask supposedly contained
the ‘corpse sweat’ which Weinberger had synthesized like a home alchemist.
Strapped beside this was an industrial chemi-sniffer, apparently rejigged to be
sensitive to one part in a billion per volume of the pheromone.
                 Cannibalised
by Jim from the neighbouring Hospital, and from the House, were other pieces of
equipment that had been beyond Weinberger’s means. Medi-sensors were taped
across the surface of the waterbed, connected to vital signs monitors outside.
A skullcap sensitive to the ‘thanatos’ brain rhythm of the ‘death plateau’ —
to be worn by the occupant of the bed — was linked with an oscilloscope
outside. From outside, too, a remote- controlled stimulant syringe could be
operated.
                 To
Jim’s eyes Weinberger’s machine looked like an old piece of Dada art, something
reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp’s Great
Glass : a machine for pursuing an enigma in the realm of the irrational, of
the wholly imaginary. It was a machine for hunting a
                 Snark. It was an insane satire, translated into rubber and
steel, wire, glass and wood, on the techniques of adjustment to the Inevitable
which was life’s fulfilment, not its catastrophe or betrayal.
                 ‘Mozart
wrote all his symphonies, didn’t he?’ thought Jim. ‘Which unwritten ones did he
fail to write?’ And yet, and yet . . .
                 But
there was nothing absurd about the machine to Weinberger. He quite glowed to
see it all assembled, with the extra medical facilities to which he could never
have gained access. In a sense, Jim realized, Weinberger was indeed approaching
the culmination of his life, in the shape of this ‘machine’. Jim had been quite
right to play along with the man’s fantasies. Here was Weinberger’s vision of
death, and quite soon Weinberger was