always know exactly what he was getting. He might fish for a minnow and find a shark on the line.
Crake had made calculations, based on the findings of other echo theorists and his own ideas. He’d identified a range of frequencies where he’d be likely to find what he wanted. Then he commenced the hunt proper.
The echo chamber began to vibrate and whine as he searched along the bandwidth. Daemonism was as much about feel and instinct as science. Crake closed his eyes and concentrated, turning the dials slowly.
There it was. That creeping sensation of being watched. He’d found something. Now he had to catch it before it slipped away.
He set up new resonances, starting high and low and then moving them closer together, feeling out the shape of the entity. He stopped when he felt the resistance of it.
The reaction was more pronounced now: a cold shiver, a slight feeling of vertigo and disorientation. He had to keep his eyes open. When he closed them, he started tipping forward.
He looked at the dials. The thing was huge, spread right across the subsonics.
Let it go, he told himself. Let it go. It’s too big.
He had it now, though. There was no way he could hold on to something like that with his standard equipment. It would simply phase into a different frequency and escape. But with the echo chamber, he could keep it pinned, pounding it with confusing signals that all interfered with one another.
He could get this one. Forget the golem, forget everything else. He just wanted to see it. Then he’d send it back. But just to see it!
Excited, riding on a fear-driven high, he worked the dials feverishly. He set up more vibrations, seeking the daemon’s primary frequencies, narrowing and narrowing the bandwidth until he matched them. The daemon was shifting wavelengths, trying to escape the cage, but he shifted with it, never letting it get away from him. The closer he came, the less space the daemon had to wriggle.
The air was throbbing. The echo chamber pulsed with invisible energies.
Spit and blood, this is working! This is actually working!
Once he had it fixed as best he could, he stepped away from the console and went to peer inside the echo chamber. Through the porthole in the door, he could see that the sphere was empty. But he wasn’t disheartened. Inside, perspectives bent out of shape, and the air warped in eye-watering contortions. Something was coming. He could hardly breathe for terror and fascination. Leaning close to the thick glass, he tried to see further inside.
A colossal, mad eye stared back at him.
He yelled, falling away from the porthole, his heart thumping hard enough to hurt. That vast eye had surged out of nowhere, surfacing into his reality, burning itself on to his consciousness. He saw it now, impossibly huge, belonging to something far bigger than the echo chamber could contain.
There was a heavy impact, and the echo chamber rocked to one side. Crake sat where he’d fallen, transfixed. Again, the sound of a giant’s fist pounding. The echo chamber dented outwards.
Oh, no. No, no.
He scrambled to his feet and ran for the console. Get rid of it, get rid of it, any way you can.
Another impact, sending a shudder through the whole sanctum. The electric lamps flickered. One tipped over, crashing to the ground. Crake lost his footing, stumbled onwards.
And then he heard her scream.
