The Diamond Contessa

by Kenneth Bulmer

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Space Opera

Synopsis

Harry Blakey remembered a childhood secret - that there was a room under his folks' home which crossed into another world. When, finally as a war veteran, he came back to the old house, he investigated - and found his memory was true. There were indeed other Earths and other civilisations and adventures to be had - at great risks. For when he enlisted in the special commando corps organised to stop the interdimensional warfare, he came up against the terrifying hordes of the Diamond Contessa. She had looted many Earths and her hunger was always increasing. No mere human heroics would wrest the keys of the world away from her - not white her army of monsters held a dozen civilisations in thrall!

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 174

Sample

One thing and one thing only drew him back home.

In the seven years he’d been away even the memory of that one thing had grown into a mystery, a thing not to be believed. He knew his secret room really existed—of course it did! But—how could it?

He humped his kit out of the cab, paid the cabby and watched him make a three-point turn and drive off toward town before, deliberately, he looked up at the house. Cold brick, shuttered windows, an architectural frown…. He’d considered the idea, seriously, that he would be unable to enter his old home. He thumped his boots down with determined force on the wooden steps and the seventh one burst through like rotten ice giving way. He did not curse. Isolated houses on the outskirts of town could fall to pieces and no one would give a damn.

When he’d picked up the keys Mr. Garvey had said: “You’ll want to find a buyer as soon as possible, Mr. Blakey. We’ll put our best efforts into moving the property, even though the market—”

And he’d said, “I don’t think I’ll put the house on the market just yet.”

Garvey’s surprise that anyone wouldn’t want to unload a near-derelict property as fast as possible was understandable. Blakey was footloose now, out, his own man at last, in a way that owed nothing to the death of his parents. He’d come home for the funeral. Now, as seemed proper, he went up to the old house. How could he tell Garvey that he wouldn’t sell because he believed there was a secret room here that ought not to exist?

His boot came up out of the brown-edged wood and he moved up the last few steps to key the door open. The hall smelled damp and brown. He dumped his kit by the warped door to the front room and went on through to the cellar door without stopping.

Remembrance of the atmosphere of the house rushed back. An only child, Blakey had not been happy here, not with his parents who represented only aloof arbitrary authority, not with the school kids among whom he had made not a single permanent friend. Only in his secret room had he ever felt that he, Harry Blakey, was really Harry Blakey and not an aggravating impediment to someone else’s life.

The light of his flash flicked down the cellar stairs. He’d put the flash in his coat pocket because he’d known he’d need it. He went down quickly. Something came up in his throat, and he swallowed.

The cellars extended under the north side of the house and were divided into oddly shaped areas and cubicle-sized storerooms reached by passageways that wriggled in and out of the foundations. Against the south side of a cellar filled with junk he paused and splayed the flashlight. The door that had been taken from its hinges on the opening leading to a wedge-shaped space under the stairs and for as long as he could remember had leaned against this wall now lay on the floor among the junk.

Blakey shut his eyes. Just before he opened them he switched off the flash. He thought his special thought and stepped through the brick wall into his secret room.

The first time he’d come in here his father had just given him a brutal thrashing, his mother had screamed abuse at him, and he’d been half-thrown down the cellar steps to be locked in—the usual punishment. He had shrieked in his five-year-old mind to get away—and, somehow, he’d walked or flown or swam past the door leaning against the brick wall into the room. He thought—at first—he must have half-opened the door and slipped into a new room in the cellar maze. Exploring the cellar’s holes and corners had not been easy, in the half-darkness he needed willpower to go on.

In the beginning he did not think of it as a secret room. It was just one more space under the house to be explored. The idea that the fusty unused parts of the cellar were his kingdom did not occur to him until much later. He did steal a half-candle and a matchbox containing half a dozen matches. Matches were forbidden. He risked an extra thrashing among all the others for those matches. His parents were not great present-givers, and at Christmas time little fuss was made. One year he asked for a flashlight, and, to his great and glorious surprise, received a slender shiny silver tube. After that, coming by batteries was the problem of his life for a surprisingly short time, for very soon after that Christmas he discovered his secret room.

The realization that the room under his house was not at all ordinary did not touch him for some time; he was content to revel in the calmness, the curious things he found there, explore, dream. And, of course, there was more than one room to his secret room.

From the place where he entered a short corridor of a brick not too dissimilar from the brick of the other cellars led onto a tumbled and confusing mishmash of wrecked things. He could only call them things, for he did not recognize them. They seemed to him to be all a part of the other things in the cellars under his parents’ house. The most astonishing difference he found lay in the absence of darkness. Globes of a soft pure light hung from the ceiling and in a way he could not explain, Harry Blakey at once felt at home in that light. From his larger chamber openings led to other rooms. One led to a stone-flagged ramp leading upward. At the top of the ramp a landing, also of stone, was solidly sealed by stone and metal. A complicated-looking handle protruded from one metal slab. No amount of effort by childish hands could open that door, could budge the handle.

Just how old he was when he met Uncle Jim he could never afterward properly remember; at times it seemed he’d always known Uncle Jim. He’d been poking about trying to open a wooden crate with the penknife he’d swopped with idiot Lesley Stevens for homework done correctly. The wood was not much like the wood upstairs, and then Uncle Jim was standing there, smiling at him.

“Hullo,” said Uncle Jim. “You gave me a surprise.”

“So did you,” said young Harry Blakey, speaking up stoutly. In that radiance he could see the blood very red on Uncle Jim’s shoulder, where the green clothing was ripped away. “You hurt?”

Then Uncle Jim fell down.

All Blakey could think to do was to wipe away some of the blood with his handkerchief and push a piece of soft cloth under the man’s head—for, of course, then he hadn’t known Uncle Jim’s name. He sat back, the bloodied handkerchief in his hand, and Uncle Jim opened his eyes. They were an odd color, dark and yet with light spots in them. He tried to smile again. Then he told Blakey what to do.

Bringing the hot water wasn’t as hard as it would have been if his parents had been sober; as it was they were snoring away in the drawing room. He washed the wound in the man’s shoulder, carefully, his mouth tight, and then fixed the bandage Uncle Jim produced from a pouch on his belt. They talked. Most of what was said was unintelligible to Blakey; but he learned Uncle Jim’s name, that he’d been set on by those misbegotten Trundlers, that he hid out here, and didn’t young Blakey know better than to go around pulsing all over the place?

“I don’t—”

“You mean you’re so young you haven’t been trained?”

“I go to school—”

“And they don’t teach you how to switch off?”

Blakey shook his head, not wanting to appear a fool to this man. Uncle Jim was large, very large, with the features of one of those statues you saw in ancient history books, all nose and chin and eyebrows, and a stare that scorched.

That part of the first meeting remained clear to him; but thereafter his meetings with the man he called Uncle Jim, and then Jim, blurred into one all-encompassing and happy relationship. He was warned not to go outside until he was older, for the Trundlers and other mechanical horrors like them would squirt him, rip him up, or jelly him. He found out all about what that meant as Jim talked on—as their meetings went on over the years. Jim used this place, which he called Internin, as a short cut.

“That first time, Harry, I’d been foolish. A Trundler caught me and I managed to blow it up, but it scratched my shoulder—”

“Scratched! I remember—” He must have been eleven or so at this time.

“Yes, well, I dodged into these ruins and found you. And you were pulsing all over the place.” Jim bent those fierce eyebrows down. “You’ve been practicing?”

“Yes. Mark me.”

He did what Jim had explained to him with his mind and Jim nodded, pleased.

“Off like a light. Good. Makes it easier for you.”

Jim always pulsed that he was coming, so that Blakey would be ready. His parents had no idea. Why should they? Their brat was better off out from under their feet. Blakey soaked up all that Jim told him. The full picture emerged slowly. Jim used this world of Internin as a shortcut between a world called Furgelay and a busy world known as Addledor.

“Internin once was a wonderful place; but then the fools took to quarreling. They had their wars.”

“And they blew themselves up with atom bombs?”

“No—although they might as well have done. They built lots of mechanical fighting units, robots, designed to destroy the enemy. They gave them powerful weapons. They stored energy from sunshine, and so could carry on for years. Well, Harry, they did carry on. They wiped out the humans. Now this world is filled with all kinds of mechanical robot fighting creatures who go around shooting one another and anything else that comes along. It’s a nightmare world. Most folk along the parallels shun the place.” He rubbed his shoulder feelingly. “With good reason.”

“But you don’t!”

Jim smiled his hawkish lopsided smile. “No, I don’t. But then, I’m what you’d call stupid myself.” He’d tried to explain what he did for a living; but Blakey could not understand.

Always Jim would check him out on his ability to control his mind. Over in a corner of the cellar by an opening Blakey had become aware of what seemed to him to be an archway surrounded by fairy lights. Lights like those of the fairground strung around in combinations of colors. The first time he’d noticed that he felt surprise, of course, but that surprise paled when he turned around to see strung around the way he came in and went out of the cellar a similar archway of lights.

Jim explained on his next visit.

“You’re gaining your powers nicely, young Harry. That’s why you must control them. Those lights look bright to you?”

“Sometimes—”

“That’s all right. They show up casements—” Here Jim wrinkled up the skin over his nose, and laughed, and said: “They’re really there, only they aren’t. Thresholds, some folk call them. You must always be very very careful how you use them.”

The idea came to him without thought. “You mean, I can go through that casement over there and—’’

“Yes. It leads to a world called Mathertone, a long way around along the parallels.”

At once Blakey was fired up. “What’s it like? Can I go there? Can we go now?”

“Most of it is water. You’d need a submarine.”

“Oh!”

Jim shook his head, reflectively chewing on a strip of what looked like old shoe leather. He liked it, though.

“Your world—Earth—is right there at the end of a parallel axis no one uses much, if at all. And yet you are a trajecter. You are a trajecter of considerable authority. When I get the time I’ll have to take a trip into your Earth. Maybe there are others, although you’re stuck so far away in the parallels I doubt if anyone would ever come here. Maybe pass through.”

Blakey said, the same as he said every time: “Can we go out now, Jim?”

And Jim would answer “Not until you are older, Harry.”

Once he said: ‘if you do go out into the parallels, you’ll need this.” Between his fingers a little silver glint caught the light. He took from one of the many pouches on his belt a thing like a hypodermic needle. Blakey hardly felt it at all. The needle deftly inserted the tiny silver bead under his scalp beside his left ear.

Jim smiled. “No, Harry. Not under your scalp. Right inside.”

“What’s it do?”

“So you can talk to folk along the way.”

“Won’t it—?”

“Not likely. It’s organic, so a scan is not likely to pick it up. Also,” and here he brought out his pack and flipped the covering open. He took out what looked like the father and mother of all the water pistols down the department store toy section. “You can’t keep this. But if we’re going out—”

Blakey jumped up. He jigged. “We’re going out!”

“You don’t want to now—?”

“You bet I do!”

“Well, watch me, jump if I say jump, don’t point this at me, and be ready to run back into the ruins.”

So, feeling bloated with feelings he did not want to worry about, Harry Blakey went with Jim out onto the surface of the world called Internin.

The place looked desolate in a way that all the deserts in the world do not look desolate. The sky and the clouds appeared like those on Earth, there were mountains on the horizon, and a river in the distance. The trees looked funny. And the mechanical monsters burst from a screen of trees two hundred yards away, bellowing like steam engines, charged for them. Jim leveled his gun, let rip with a blast of yellow fire. The mechanicals shot back purple blasts of flame. Blakey aimed the overblown water pistol, triggered a line of yellow fire, and then Jim was bellowing and they were jumping back into the charred ruins from’ which they had stepped.

Back in his secret room, Blakey got his breath back.

Jim looked down at him.

“All right, young man. That settles it. They were waiting for me—”

Blakey was not foolish enough to miss what this meant.

He was still young at the time. He said: “But you won’t come to see me again!”

Jim’s expression did not change. He just waited. At once Blakey burst out: “Jim! I meant—if they’re waiting, then you’re in danger!”

“Don’t let that worry you. I can slip past. And as for visiting you, well, that isn’t going to be so easy, all right. But I will. You can rely on that.”

“Not if you get yourself killed!”

Jim took out his chunk of old shoe leather and started to chew the end. Presently he took it out of his mouth and said, “I do not anticipate getting myself killed, Harry.”

By this time the secret room contained chairs and a table, and Jim had brought in some miraculous kind of cooking stove. Books lay scattered about. It was a den. Blakey started to brew up, and Jim sat down, began to clean his weapon.

“When I go I’m going to put a lock on the door. I don’t want the mechanicals coming down here.” He wiped a cloth over the metal parts of the gun. “I’ve taught you a lot about the parallels. You’re quick and smart. Keep your gift to yourself in your world, for I think—” Here he paused, and went on more slowly. “In some parallels I know they don’t understand the planes, and if a lad like yourself displays trajecter gifts, they regard him as insane, or a wizard, or evil. Anyway, mind what I say, Harry.”

Blakey swallowed and said nothing.

Jim usually wore a simple one-piece outfit of some indeterminate color, green, grey, slate, with a broad belt festooned with pouches, and with a pack on his back. His boots were solid and the left sprouted a gun butt and the right the handle of a knife. Blakey would wear boots like that one day, he’d always promised himself.

“Mind you, young Harry, you call me Jim. That’s not my real name, you know, as you do know.” When Jim had pronounced his name all Blakey had been able to repeat were the two syllables: “Car-ank.” All the rest, and there was a quantity of it, had escaped him. Now, with that organic pip near his brain, he understood that Jim’s name summed up the qualities of the man, and he did not repeat them for he knew such a recital of glorification would embarrass Jim between friends. Jim finished: “I just hope you’ll think of me from time to time, as I shall think of you.”

Blakey, young as he was, had the sense to make no reply.

The secret room appeared a warm and friendly place. The junk had been swept into one cubicle, there was a carpet on the floor, the table and chairs were polished. Some of the artifacts found remained, for Jim said that this basement of the ruined building above represented a kind of museum to a vanished people. When Jim prepared to go he said: “I’m going to put an interdict on you, Harry.”

Blakey opened his mouth.

“Wait, Harry! Your life is your own. I do not wish to interfere any more than I have. I wonder if Lewanos will forgive me for what I’ve already done.” Lewanos was another name for God, Blakey knew. “But you were so—so naked and helpless, pulsing away. When you’re a grown man, the interdict will weaken and vanish. Then, Harry, remember. I’ve taught you and you’ve learned well. You will have great power. If you don’t use it wisely, then I’ll come back and—and—”

When Jim walked up the ramp to the metal door, and checked the all clear, and said a cheerful good-bye and stepped out and the door clanged shut, Harry Blakey knew he would not see him for a long time, perhaps never again.

So now here he was, a man coming home to bury his parents. Could all that jumble in his head really have happened? Parts of it seemed real. Others appeared to him mere ghostly flashes of furtive recollection. Trajecters and parallels and all the rest of it. Could a secret room—a room in a ruined building’s basement on another world—really exist under his parents’ house?

He thought his special thought and stepped through the brick wall and—he stood in his secret room.

He took a breath. The air smelled sweet. The globes of pure soft radiance dispelled the shadows. There was very little dust. So this part was real. There was a secret room, just as he had known all along there was. So maybe the rest of his jumbled memories were true as well?

Unsteadily, he walked along the corridor and into the main room. The table, the chairs, the magical cooking device, the books, the carpet—yes, yes! All were as he remembered them in the confused and doubting recesses of his memory.

Jim—if there had really been anyone called Jim—had tried to protect him. From just what, at the moment, Blakey was none too sure; but if his memories were real, then Jim knew what he was doing. The whole stew of memory could be simply the mish-mash of wish-fulfillment of a deprived childhood.

He looked about him. There was no denying this! He’d stepped through a solid brick wall. The cellars extended out much farther than could be explained logically. He walked through, remembering, and climbed the ramp. The metal door was bulged as though some force had tried to break through from outside.

He put his hand on the handle. It would not turn. A lock, Jim had said. And this interdict. Blakey could recall flashes in detail; yes, a lock and an interdict. And he’d not seen Jim from that day to this.

He looked back and saw the archway over the brick wall through which he had entered. That archway glimmered. As he looked lights like fairground strings of lamps glowed into life. Brighter and brighter they shone until he shaded his eyes. And from somewhere the thought shone in his head: “A wide and simple casement.”

The way that special thought worked in his head grooved, dovetailed, with the concept of the casement. The lights grew and extended until they formed a perfect oval, glowing against the brick wall. And through that opening he could sense quite clearly the dank and unpleasant basement of his parents’ house beyond.

He swung about quickly. Yes! Against a corner of the cellar by an opening … The oval of lights indicated the threshold onto Mathertone, the world of water.

He could not doubt now. If he doubted what he thought had happened as a child, then he must now be insane.

Jim had been real! He had existed! Those marvelous memories were not the si. . .