Free The Gods Look Down by Trevor Hoyle

on the display, a coloured light. It flickered and was gone.
    â€˜Is the VTR running?’ Dagon inquired.
    Milton Blake nodded, his eyes fixed on the screen. One of the technicians said, ‘Something’s happening to him.’ His voice was uncertain as though he had been caught off-balance.
    Blake looked quickly through the angled observation window. He felt as jumpy as a cat. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
    The other technician said, ‘My God.’
    â€˜
What is it
?’
    â€˜His hands,’ the technician said. ‘You can see through his hands. You can see the bones—’
    Dr Francis Dagon craned his neck forward, looking down intently into the transmission area. ‘The man’s skull is visible,’ he remarked. ‘His flesh is becoming transparent.’
    Blake said through the talk-back, ‘Watch those readings. Report immediately any fluctuations outside the norm. What’s the adrenal level?’
    â€˜510.’
    â€˜An interesting physiological condition,’ said Dagon, craning forward. ‘Has it happened with any of your other patients?’
    Blake was about to reply when the display came to life: an image had appeared in three-dimensional colour. He said through the talk-back, ‘We have something.’
    â€˜I don’t like this,’ one of the technicians said.
    Dagon turned to Blake and said conversationally, ‘He seems to be having a fit. Is this normal?’
    The patient’s head was thrown back so that the transparent musculature of his neck was visible. There was foam on his lips and his eyes were now open, the eyeballs upturned into the head, white and blindly staring. His limbs were rigid, jerking stiffly as spasms of uncontrollable energy passed through them like bursts of electrical current. The face and hands were now completely translucent, displaying the bones, muscles and blood vessels within.
    Both technicians were staring anxiously towards the observation room. Blake said, ‘Watch those levels. Report any deviations outside the safety parameters.’
    â€˜Is he all right do you suppose?’ Dagon asked, relighting his cigar. ‘Will we have to abort the experiment?’ His interest seemed purely academic.
    Blake adjusted the controls on the display and brought the image into fine focus. ‘I hope all this is worth it.’
    â€˜Are we to proceed?’ Dr Francis Dagon said with faint surprise.
    Blake took out his handkerchief and wiped the palms of his hands. ‘You wanted mythic projection and that’s what you’ve got,’ he said, and then through the talk-back, ‘We’re on vision and recording. Watch those levels.’

5
The Aleph
    The whip lashed home seven times, lacerating the flesh with seven neat slices. The crowd in the market-place, who had nothing better to do than gawp, cackled and snorted and spat into the baked red earth.
    â€˜Give ‘im one for luck!’ somebody shouted in a cheery cracked voice and the crowd laughed and stamped its feet in agreement.
    â€˜Seven is the penalty and seven’s been paid,’ said the town clerk officiously. He turned his head and mumbled over his shoulder, ‘Throw him down. Let the dogs at him.’
    He was flung into the dust, an idiot-child of a man with a misshapen head and red drooling lips, and the town dogs gathered round and licked his raw back. One shoulder was hunched, the protruding shoulder-blade showing bleak and white like an embryonic wing. That side of his body, the left, had been devastated by a stroke and both the hand and the leg were at odds with their counterparts.
    Somebody kicked at him pettishly (a man who had lain awake all night suffering from haemorrhoids) but he hardly felt it through the hot clawing fury of pain which seared his back. The dogs snuffled and licked greedily, relishing the warm salty tang of fresh blood. Because of the half-formed ‘wing’ he was known