Slimer

alive.’

Six

Paul and Mark decided not to go and tell the others about their grim discovery just yet — the bad news could wait until later — instead they resumed the search for Dr Shelley on Level Two. They spent over an hour without result and then Paul suggested they go and have another look at the TV monitoring centre they’d investigated briefly the previous night.

For a time Paul fiddled with the camera controls, cutting from camera to camera around the platform in the hope that they might spot Shelley, or anyone, on one of the eight monitors but all they got were views of deserted corridors and labs.

By accident they found themselves, finally, watching the other four who had obviously left the kitchen and were in one of the several recreational rooms on the bottom level. The three women were playing cards in a desultory fashion while Alex sat in front of a TV set sorting through a pile of video cassettes.

‘Gives you a feeling of power, doesn’t it, being able to watch someone without them knowing it,’ said Mark, staring at the screen.

‘I guess so,’ said Paul. ‘I just wish there was some kind of “erase” button we could press that would get rid of Alex.’

‘You hate his guts, don’t you?’

‘Sure. Don’t you too?’

‘If there was a Guinness Book of Shits he’d be Number One,’ said Mark, ‘I wish we’d never got involved with him.’

‘Yeah, it was a big mistake all right,’ agreed Paul. ‘Only Linda had the smarts to see through him from the beginning. She warned me against getting mixed up with him but I didn’t listen to her.’ ‘He wants Linda. You realise that, I hope,’ said Mark calmly.

Paul nodded. ‘Yeah. And if he ever so much as touches her I’ll kill him.’

‘You mean that, don’t you?’ said Mark. He sounded impressed.

Paul looked at him with embarrassment. ‘Sounds like something out of a bad movie, but yes, I do mean it.’

‘I wish I had your guts. But I’m weak. I’ve always been weak but now I’m weaker than ever.’

‘Hey, come on Mark. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re not weak.’

‘Oh yes I am.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘And you don’t know the half of it.’ He grimaced suddenly and grabbed the console with both hands to steady himself.

‘You okay?’ asked Paul, alarmed.

‘Yes,’ said Mark shakily, ‘just a dizzy spell. I’ll be fine.’ ‘You should really see a doctor when we get home. I think there’s something wrong with you.’

He laughed again. ‘You can say that again. But don’t worry. I know what it is. I can handle it. But don’t ask me to explain. There’s nothing you can do to help. Okay?’ ‘Okay,’ said Paul reluctantly. ‘At least you’re looking better today than you were yesterday. You looked awful.’

‘I feel better. And I’ve stopped seeing things too. For a time there I thought I was going crazy.’

Paul frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You remember I told you about the stuff I found in the overalls up on the crane. The black slime?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Wei, I never finished telling you the whole story. It moved, Paul. It poured out of one of the sleeves, ran across the floor of the cabin and went out through an air vent in the back. It actually crawled up the back wall of the cabin to reach the vent, like a kind of liquid worm…’

Paul stared at him. ‘Are you having me on?’

‘No, I swear it Paul. That’s what I saw. Or that’s what I Ihoughl I saw. Of course it must have been a hallucination. I know that now but it really shook me at the time.’

‘Yeah,⁵ said Paul, remembering how shaken he’d looked when he’d come down from the crane. ‘But why should you be having hallucinations? Or is that part of what you can’t tell me about?’

Mark nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Okay, have it your way,’ said Paul, a little stiffly. He turned his attention back to the monitors. The girls were still playing cards but Alex was now watching the TV set, obviously having found something he liked among the video cassettes. And knowing him it’s probably pornographic, thought Paul sourly.

But this served to remind him of the racks of video tapes he’d noticed in the control room the day before. He got up and examined them again. ‘We might as well start checking this stuff,’ he told Mark. ‘I just wish they weren’t labelled in code.’

‘Take one tape at random from each rack,’ suggested Mark. ‘We might have some luck.’

Paul picked out a total of ten tapes and put the first one into the VCR unit that had been built into the console. After some trial-and-error pushing of buttons one of the monitor screens went momentarily blank then began displaying the words ‘The Phoenix Project — Data File 22/AX/G89812’. This was followed by a visual read-out of technical information most of which Paul couldn’t make head nor tail of. There were terms he recognised, however, such as ‘recombinant DNA’, and ‘nucleotides’ which confirmed what he had already felt certain was the purpose behind the concealed labs.

‘This proves they were doing genetic engineering experiments here,’ he said to Mark.

‘Yes, but it still doesn’t tell us what kind of experiment. I mean, for all we know they might have been trying to come up with a new sort of oil-slick eating bug. This place is owned by an oil company, after all.’

‘But if it was all innocent and above board then why did they go to so much trouble to camouflage these labs?’ asked Paul.

‘Perhaps they didn’t want their competitors to know about it,’ suggested Mark. ‘They were afraid of industrial espionage or something. There’s big money in this game, you know. They patent these artificial bugs the same way they patent new inventions. And that might explain those armed security guards too. ’

‘Yes,’ said Paul doubtfully, still staring at the screen. Then he pointed at it. ‘There’s that word again — Phoenix. That’s definitely the code name for whatever it was they were trying to make…’

‘Phoenix. The mythical bird of fire that was reborn from its own ashes,’ said Mark, and suddenly grinned. ‘You think maybe they were trying to create a new line in poultry? A chicken that lays square eggs? A chicken that comes automatically covered in a crisp golden batter and in its own cardboard box?’

‘Very funny,’ said Paul, scowling. He pressed the ‘Fast Forward’ button and raced the tape quickly through to its finish. Then he tried another one. It was the same as the first — a visual record of highly specialised scientific data that neither of them could follow.

It wasn’t until they tried the fifth tape that they got something different.

‘Hey, that’s Shelley,’ cried Mark.

It was Dr Shelley, looking much the same as he had the previous night. He was talking directly into the camera and from the background they could see that he had made the tape in this very room. Then Paul noticed, for the first time, a small video camera above the console which was almost directly facing him.

‘Turn it up,’ urged Mark, ‘Let’s hear what he’s saying.’ Paul found the volume control. Suddenly Shelley’s voice