Read Online Fear that man by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online Page A

boards would hold in glowing-red? amber? blue?-letters. He decided on crimson words against a black background. GNOSSOS/HURKOS… “What floor is this?” he asked Breadloaf.
        “Top.”
        TOP FLOOR. EXECUTIVE OFFICE. COME QUICKLY. SAM.
        There would be waiting then. He paced the carpet briskly, now and then trying to go out of the door but always discovering that the hypnotic suggestions prohibited that. Finally, they came. And they demanded explanations.
        He gave them the few he could, told them about the bomb planted below, the bomb that would wreck the machinery, shut down the Shield, and set the Prisoner free-whatever the Prisoner might be. He gave them the location of it, told them how to remove it and how to handle it: gently. They ran to get it. It seemed like a very long time that they were gone-time enough to construct a thousand possible deaths that might result if the bomb exploded. Just when he was ready to count them as deserters, they returned with the bomb and the timer, carrying it as if it were a piece of delicate and expensive crystal.
        Carefully, Sam disconnected the timer, lifted the halves of the casing apart, and poured the volatile liquid out of the single window behind Breadloaf’s massive desk. Four breaths were released simultaneously as he turned and said, “It’s okay.”
        “Then this is it!” Gnossos said, the first to recover completely. He paced back and forth, looking at the Shield, stopping to touch it, to examine the point where it went flush with the wall. “This is the thing that has been directing you. But if it is trapped behind this Shield, how did it get to you to hypnotize you? And how did it whip up that jelly-cored ship?”
        “I think I can… shed some light on that,” Breadloaf grunted. He was still paralyzed, but his fingers were tingling, and he could move his thumbs. The effects were beginning to wear away.
        They turned to him. Gnossos crossed the room. “What light?”
        “He-” Breadloaf began.
        “Sam,” Sam identified himself.
        Breadloaf blinked appreciation. “Yes. Sam. I think you are all operating under a false assumption. The Prisoner did not get Sam. He did not kidnap Sam. Sam is the Prisoner’s creation.”
        “Creation?” Gnossos snorted.
        “Yes. The Prisoner imagined Sam, built his imaginings into a concrete entity. It was probably done with a last big burst of the Prisoner’s energies.”
        “That’s absurd!”
        Breadloaf tried to shake his head, only succeeded in making his lips quiver and his eyes tremble. “No. The Prisoner concentrated, summed up all his resources, and shaped a man and a ship. The ship was not a machine, for machines are alien to the Prisoner’s mind. Some places, the dimensions are rather close, due to the warping of the higher dimension. Perhaps at one of these places he forced his thoughts through the thin barrier and made Sam and the ship.”
        “But why not force himself through at one of those spots?” Hurkos asked.
        “He could not do that with what energies he had left. You see, he is much, much larger than the ship and Sam put together, larger by an infinite degree. He is the entire higher dimension!”
         Ocher birds flittered over green and blue oceans…
        “One creature is an entire dimension?”
        Breadloaf coughed. “If that creature is God, yes. And that is precisely who the Prisoner of the Shield is!”

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        “God!” Gnossos shouted.
        Hurkos wandered next to the Shield, pressed his face to it, looking into the colors that swirled, folded upon themselves and became new colors, Here, brought to him through modern science, was the being that prayer could not yield. Technology had replaced faith and with far better results.
        “The dreams,” Gnossos said, turning to the dazzling display on the screen. “The dreams Hurkos took from it were the dreams of a paranoid,