by Brian Lumley
"That's right,' she answered. 'It has a rapid spin, too, and unlike the old moon shows both its face and its backside.'
Jazz nodded. 'Not shy, eh?'
She snorted. 'In some ways you remind me of another Englishman I once knew,' she said. 'He seemed sort of naive, too, and yet in reality he was anything but naive!'
'Oh?' Jazz looked at her. 'Who was this lucky man?'
'He wasn't that lucky,' she said, tilting her head a little.
Jazz looked at her in profile in the last rays of moonlight, decided he liked her. A lot.
'So who was he?' he asked again.
'He was a member — maybe even the head — of your British E-Branch,' she answered. 'His name was Harry Keogh. And he had a special talent. I have a talent, too, but his was… different. I don't even know if you could call it ESP. That's how different it was.'
Jazz remembered what Khuv had told him about her. That sort of stuff was so much baloney as far as he was concerned, but best not to let her see his scepticism. 'Oh, yes, that's right,' he said. 'You're a mentalist, right? You read minds. So what was this Keogh's talent, eh?'
'He was a Necroscope,' she said, her voice suddenly cold.
'A what?'
'He could talk to the dead!' she said; and coming to a sudden, angry halt, she drew apart from Jazz.
He looked at her stubborn, bad-tempered stance, and at the great wolf standing between them, staring yellow-eyed from one to the other. 'Did I do something?'
'You thought something!' she snapped. 'You thought, "what a load of-"'
'Christ!' said Jazz. Because that was exactly what he'd thought.
'Listen,' she said. 'Do you know how many years I've been hiding the truth of my telepathy? Knowing I was better than anything else they had but not wanting to work for them? Not daring to work for them, because I knew if I did then sooner or later I'd come up against Harry Keogh again? I've suffered for my telepathy, Jazz, and yet now — here where it doesn't matter much any more — the moment I admit the truth of it…'
'Show me!' he said, cutting her off. 'OK, I can see how we won't get anywhere if we've no faith in each other.
But we won't get far by lying or misleading each other either. If you say you can do it I have to accept it, right — certainly I know there are those who do believe you have this talent. But isn't there any way you can show me? You have to admit, Zek, it would have been easy just now to take a guess at what I was thinking. Not only about your telepathy but also about this Keogh bloke — about what you say he can do! Don't tell me you haven't met up with scepticism before, not with a gift most people would consider supernatural!'
'You're tempting me?' her eyes flashed fire. 'Humouring me? Taunting me? Get thee behind me, Satan!'
'Oh, it's godlike, this talent of yours, is it?' Jazz couldn't quite conceal his sneer. 'Well, if you're that good, how come you didn't know who it was coming up the pass? if telepathy and ESP in general are real, why didn't Khuv know I'd hidden away a magazine for my SMG, which is how I came to get the chance to drag that goon Vyotsky in here with me?'
Wolf gave a low whine and his ears went flat.
'You're annoying him,' Zek said, 'and you're annoying me, too. Also, you've missed my point. Big macho man! I say: "I'm a telepath", and you say: "Prove it". The next thing, you're asking me to prove I'm a woman!'
Jazz nodded, pulled a sour face. 'You rate yourself pretty damned high, don't you? God knows what sort of men you're used to, but I — '
'All right!' she snapped. 'Watch…'
She looked at Wolf, the merest glance, then turned and tossed her head, walked on toward the sun. She went maybe a hundred yards, and Jazz and the wolf stood still watching her. Then she stopped and looked back. 'Now I'm not going to say anything,' she called out. 'So see what you think of what happens next.'
Jazz frowned, thought: What the — ? But in the next moment Wolf showed him what the. The huge creature loped closer, took the sleeve of Jazz's one-piece in his great jaws — but gently — began to tug Jazz in Zek's direction. Jazz stumbled to keep up, and the faster he went the faster Wolf ran, until both of them were flying full tilt toward the girl where she waited. Only then did the wolf let go, when both of them drew level with her.
'Well?' she said, as Jazz came to a panting, stumbling halt.
He sucked the hole in his jaw where two teeth had once been, put up a hand and scratched his nose. 'Well,' he started, 'I — '
'You're thinking I'm an animal trainer,' she cut in. 'But if you say it out loud, that's it. We go our separate ways. I've survived so far without you and I can keep right on doing it.' Wolf went and stood beside her.
'Two to one,' Jazz grinned, however ruefully. 'And since I've always believed in the democratic process… OK, there's no option but to believe you. You're a telepath.' They carried on walking, but slightly more apart now. 'So why didn't you know it was me coming up the pass? How come you challenged me as Vyotsky?'
'You saw the castle back there, the keep?'
'Yes.'
'That's why.'
Jazz glanced back. The cliff-hugging castle must be miles back by now. 'But it was empty, deserted.'
'Maybe, and maybe not. The Wamphyri want me — badly. They're not stupid, anything but. They know I came in through the sphere, the Gate, and they've surely guessed that sooner or later I'd try to get out again that way. At least, I credit them with that much intelligence. It would have been easy for them during the last sundown — during any one of many sundowns — to put a creature in there. There'll be plenty of rooms and corners in there that the sun never touches.'
Jazz shook his head, held up a restraining hand. 'Even if I understood all you just said, which I don't, still I wouldn't know what it has to do with me,' he said.
'In this world,' she answered, 'you're careful how you use ESP. The Wamphyri have it — in many diverse forms — and so to a lesser degree do most of the animals. Only the true men are without it.'
'You mean, if the Wamphyri left something in that castle back there — a creature? — it would have heard your thoughts?' Again Jazz was close to incredulous.
'It might have heard my directed thoughts, yes,' she nodded.
'But that's — ' he stilled his tongue before it could offend her.
'Wolf can hear them,' she said, simply.
'And me?' Jazz gave a snort. 'Does that make me an idiot or something, because I can't hear them?'
'No,' she shook her head. 'Not an idiot, just a true man. You're not an esper. Listen, when I came up this way I heard your thoughts, distant and strange and a little confused. But I didn't dare concentrate on you and check out your identity in case that allowed something else to pick out and identify me! Now that we're in the light of the sun, the pressure's off; but the closer I got to Starside the more careful I had to be. And because I couldn't be sure you weren't Vyotsky, so I challenged you. You said he'd probably have killed me. Maybe he would and maybe not. But then he'd have had to kill Wolf, too, which wouldn't be so easy. And if he had killed me, then he really would be on his own. It was a chance I had to take…'
This time Jazz accepted all she told him; he had to start somewhere, and it seemed the best way to go. 'Listen,' he said. 'Even though I like to think I'm fairly quick on the uptake, still there's a lot you'll need to explain about what you've already told me. But before that there's one thing I'd better know right now: do I need to guard my thoughts?'
'Here in the sunlight? No. On Starside, yes — all the time — but with a bit of luck we'll never see Starside again.'
'OK,' Jazz nodded. 'Now let's get to more immediate things. Where's this cave you told me about? I really think we should rest-up. And at the same time I can do a better job on your feet. Also, you look like you could use a more substantial meal.'
She smiled at him, the first time she'd done it. Jazz wished he could see her in good old down-to-earth daylight. 'I'll tell you something,' she said. 'I long ago learned not to listen in on people's thoughts
— they can be nice, I'll grant you, but when they're not nice they can be very unpleasant indeed. We sometimes think things we could never express in words. Me, too. Among espers it was a general rule that we observe each other's privacy. But I've been lonely a long time — for a mind I could relate to, I mean. A mind from my own world. So while I've been hearing you talking, well, I've been hearing other things, too. When I've grown used to you, then I'll make an effort not to intrude. I'm trying even now, but… I can't help scanning you.'
Jazz frowned. 'So what was I thinking?' he said. 'I mean, I only said we should rest-up.'
'But you meant I should rest-up. Me, Zek Foener. That's nice of you, and if I really needed it I'd accept. But you've come quite a long way yourself. And anyway, I'd prefer to keep moving until we're right out of the pass. Another four miles or so and we're out of it. But as you can see, the sun is just about to touch the eastern wall.
It's a slow process, but in something less than an hour and a half the pass will be in darkness again. On Sunside it's still sunup for, oh, twenty-five hours yet, and the evening is just as long. After that… then we'll be holed up somewhere.' She shivered.
Jazz knew nothing about ESP, but he did read people very well. 'You're a hell of a brave woman,' he said; and then he wondered why, for passing compliments was something he wasn't good at and didn't usually do. But he knew he'd meant it. So did she, but she didn't agree with him.
'No, I'm not,' she said seriously. 'I think I maybe used to be, but now I'm a dreadful coward. You'll find out why soon enough.'
'Before then,' Jazz said, 'you'd better fill me in on more immediate hazards — assuming they are immediate. You said something about the Sunsiders — Travellers? — being after you? And something about the Wamphyri being desperate to get hold of you? Now what's all that about?'
'Sunsiders.'' she gasped, but not in answer. She stiffened to a halt, glanced wildly all about, especially in the shadows cast by the eastern cliffs. Her hand went to her brow, stroked it with trembling fingers. Wolf's hackles rose; he laid back his ears and offered a low, throaty growl.
Jazz took his SMG off safe. It was already cocked. He checked that the magazine was firmly seated in its housing. 'Zek?' he husked.
'Arlek.' she whispered. And: 'That's what comes of holding back on my telepathy, for your sake! Jazz, I — '
But she had no time for anything else, for by then they were in the thick of it!
11. Castles — Travellers — The Projekt
Something more than an hour earlier:
Keeping alert for bats, Karl Vyotsky rode his motorcycle across the boulder-strewn plain toward the towering, fantastically carved stacks standing like weird sentinels in the east. It had been his first instinct to make for the pass and the thin sliver of sun he'd seen on the horizon in the high wide 'V of the canyon. But half-way to the mouth of the pass the sun had gone down, leaving only its rays to form a fan of pink spokes on the southern sky.
The mountain range reaching east and west as far as the eyes could see was black in silhouette now, highlighted with patches and slices of gleaming gold where the moon's beams lit on reflective features; but the sky over the mountains was indigo shot with fading shafts of yellow, and since night was obviously falling on this world, Vyotsky preferred the open ground under the moon to the inky blackness of the pass. He had no way of knowing that on the other side of the range, the daylight would last for the equivalent of two of his old days.
And so with his headlight blazing, he had turned back and headed for the stacks instead; and as his eyes had grown accustomed to the moonlight, and as the miles sped by under his now slightly eccentric wheels, so he had gazed at those enigmatic aeries some nine or ten miles east with something more than casual curiosity. Were those lights he could see in the topmost towers? If so, and if there were people up there, what sort of people would they be? While he had been pondering that, then he'd seen the bats. But not the tiny, flying-mice creatures of Earth!
Three of them, each a metre across wing-tip to wing-tip, had swooped on him, causing him to swerve and almost unseating him. The beat of their membrane wings had been a soft, rapid whup-whup-whup, stirring the air with its throbbing. They seemed of the same species as Encounter Four: Desmodus the vampire. Vyotsky didn't know what had attracted them; possibly it had been the roar of his engine, which was loud and strange in the otherwise eerie silence of this place. But when one of the bats cut across his headlight beam -
The creature's flight had immediately become erratic, even frenzied. Shooting aloft on the instant, its alarmed, high-pitched sonar trill had echoed weirdly down to Vyotsky, to be answered with nervous queries from its two travelling companions. That had given the Russian a notion how to be rid of them. Possibly they were harmless, merely curious; vampires or not, they weren't likely to attack a man, not while he was active and mobile. But he had his time cut out controlling his machine over this rugged terrain. There were fissures in the dry, pulverized earth of the plain, and rocks and boulders scattered everywhere. He needed to concentrate on where he was going, not on what this trio of huge bats were up to.
And so he'd stopped the bike, taken a powerful hand-torch from one of his packs, and waited until the bats had come close again. The one already 'blinded' kept its distance, patrolling on high, but after a little while the others had moved in closer. As they circled about him, then darted at him head-on, so Vyotsky had aimed his torch and pressed its button to bathe them in dazzling light. Confusion! The two had crashed into each other, fallen in a tangle. They separated on the ground, scuttling, flopping, crying their vibrating cries of alarm. Then one had managed to flap back aloft, but the other wasn't so lucky.
Vyotsky's SMG almost chopped the thing in half, splashed its blood on nearby rocks. And when the stuttering echoes of his weapon's voice had died away, the two survivors had gone. He'd given several loud blasts on the bike's horn then, to speed them on their way…
That had been twenty minutes ago and he hadn't been bothered since. He'd been aware that small shadows flitted apace with him high overhead, but nothing had come within swatting distance. He was glad of that, for one thing was certain: he mustn't expend any more ammunition killing bats! Like the Englishman, Michael Simmons, he knew that there were far worse things than bats in this world.
By now, too, one other thing was certain: he'd been right about the lights atop the no longer distant aeries. The closest of these was perhaps five miles away, with others dotted irregularly over the plain behind it, fading into the distance and seeming to get smaller and hazier even in the bright light of the moon. Their bases were piled with scree, fortified with walls and earthworks. In the striated, stony stem of the closest one, lights flickered and flared intermittently; smoke smudged the dark blue sky, obscuring the pale stars where it issued from various chimneys; lesser structures clung to precipitous faces where ledges had permitted precarious construction work. But the great stone buildings that crowned these massive stacks could only be described accurately in one word: castles!
Who had built them, how and why? — these things remained to be discovered; but Vyotsky felt certain they were the works of men. Warlike men! The kind of men the big Russian could do business with — he hoped. Strong men, certainly; and again his eyes were lifted to the crest of that closest tower, to the great ominous structure wrought bleak and frowning to scan the land about like some brooding watchtower.
In a little while, returning his gaze to the hazardous way ahead, Vyotsky found himself obliged to apply his brakes. A low wall of piled boulders had seemed to grow out of the littered surface, stretching left far out onto the plain, and right to extend itself into the very foothills of the mountains. The wall was maybe five feet high and a little less than that through its base. Man-made, of course, it was… a boundary? The Russian turned his bike south, and riding up into the foothills he searched for a break in the wall. But ahead the wall rose up to meet with a steeply inclined escarpment of smooth rock which Vyotsky k
new his machine couldn't climb. And even if it could, he wouldn't. Frustrated, he turned about, pausing a while to stare thoughtfully at the nearest stack.
From this high vantage point his view was that much better. Seated here on his bike, for a moment he found himself calculating the dimensions of these mighty columns:
At its base, this one would be maybe two hundred metres through, tapering down to about half of that as it rose all of a kilometer and a half to its turret-clad crest. Basically the tower was — well, a stone stack! Natural as any of the Grand Canyon's grotesque outcrops, its awesomeness lay mainly in its size and the structures built upon it. But as his eyes travelled up the tremendous, sky-scraping height of the thing, so he noticed what he took to be activity of some sort in the darkness of a huge cavern close to the top.
He narrowed his eyes in an attempt to bring the activity into focus. Now what was… that!
Stuffed into the bottom of his main back-pack — packed in haste, when he hadn't been thinking too clearly — Vyotsky knew there were binoculars. All well and good, but he didn't want to waste the time necessary to retrieve them now. But staring at the stack with its many gravity-defying structures, its watchtower castle and now this bustling activity in the -
Something launched itself outwards from the high cavern!
Vyotsky's spine prickled and his fleshy lips drew back from teeth which were still sore from the battering Simmons's elbow had given them. He drew breath in a gasp, straining his eyes to make out what it was that floated now like a black boiling cloud, forming an airfoil as it circled slowly about the great stack and lost a little height.
And in the next moment all of the blood drained from the Russian's face as it dawned on him just what this flying thing might be — namely, the twin of Encounter One! An alien dragon in the sky of an alien land!
Vyotsky was paralysed with dread, but only for a moment. Now was not the time to go into shock. He switched off his engine, and keeping to the lee of the wall let his bike free-wheel and carry him down from the foothills back to the plain. There he found a massive outcrop of rock and parked the bike in its shadow. The moon, which seemed to be moving across the sky remarkably quickly, was now almost directly overhead, making concealment difficult. In what little shadow there was, the Russian fumbled to unhook his packs, loaded his SMG with a fresh magazine and stuffed a spare into a pocket of his one-piece. Then he primed his small flame-thrower, and even though he was faithless thought: Christ! — and a lot of good this will be against that!
