by Brian Lumley
They took their coffees into the bed-sitting-room, where Turnbull put something down on a small occasional table. “What do you make of that?”
Gill picked it up. It was six inches long, blunt-tipped at one end, like a silver pocket torch or thickish fountain pen, otherwise featureless apart from a very small scar and dent halfway along its cylindrical length. Gill fingered the dent.
“A freak shot,” Turnbull told him. “I hit it in his hand. There’ll be a fistful of fingers out there in the snow. These bullets I’m using are stoppers!”
“My God!” said Gill.
“It’s a hard world, son,” Turnbull grated. But then he saw that Gill’s remark hadn’t been directed at him. Gill was staring at the thing in his hand. As he stared so it began to whir, but gratingly, like something was broken. Its blunt tip shimmered with an almost invisible vibration. Gill quickly held it away from himself, towards the table. For a moment its vibrating tip touched the dark oak of the tabletop—then sliced through like it was cheese!
Gill gave a small cry and let go of the thing. Inert, it fell to the carpet … .
CHAPTER FIVE
Gill and Turnbull came to a mutual understanding, put away the alien weapon and called the police. This action coincided with the wailing of a siren from fairly close at hand. Before the car could actually get to them, Gill went back out (covered by Turnbull from the shadows of the corridor) and gingerly retrieved a bloody finger. He had time to hide that, too, before the police began ringing the doorbell.
The two men gave identical statements:
Turnbull had been attacked by an intruder who had then threatened Gill with a gun. Recovering from the initial attack, Turnbull had drawn the intruder back out into the street, shooting at him before he himself could be shot at. He believed he’d hit him in the hand. That was all there was to it.
A quick telephone call to Turnbull’s Minister (he was at the home of an MP in Edinburgh, returning to Killin tomorrow) had authenticated Turnbull’s identity and explained his possession of a weapon. Fingers had, then been gathered up from the snow outside, substantiating the story; by then, too, it was snowing again, huge soft flakes an inch across. There was no blood to mention, and no tracks anyone could hope to follow.
By 2:45 A.M. the police were satisfied they’d covered everything and went off to make their report. They’d considered putting a guard on the house but higher authority had dissuaded them: pointless to put a minder on a minder. Gill should be safe as long as Turnbull was here. Instead they would insist on covert police protection for Turnbull’s Minister, at least until Turnbull had been recalled to the job. It could well be that the Minister had been the real target. Turnbull had pretended agreement: maybe he had been at that. But neither he nor Gill believed it.
When Turnbull and Gill were alone again and as the latter made more coffee, Turnbull growled: “Okay, Spencer, let’s talk.”
“Talk?” Gill repeated him.
“Do you know this American word, ‘meaningful’? Well, it’s time you and I had a meaningful conversation. Before, when we talked, we were finding our way, fooling around, feeling each other out. You were, anyway. I was just being me. But I was right about you: that is, I know you’re not telling everything you know about the Castle. And tonight’s little visit proves it.”
Gill was jumpy, surly. He didn’t like being squeezed into a corner. “What does it prove?”
“For one, it proves that there’s a lot more going on here than meets the eye. Was that guy tonight an alien or what? I know his weapon is!”
“I didn’t see him well enough,” said Gill. “Didn’t get close enough—thank God! And anyway I don’t know what an alien looks like. You’re right about the weapon, though. That certainly is alien. It was made where the Castle was made—where it was designed, anyway.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“No, but it’s too much of a coincidence.”
“I agree. As for our intruder”—Turnbull shrugged—“it was all too quick. He came, got spiteful, didn’t like what he’d bitten into, went. And I’m not much clued up on aliens either. But I’ll tell you one thing: he was strong!”
“We have the weapon, anyway,” said Gill, with some satisfaction. “That goes to the people upstairs.”
“Like hell!” said Turnbull. “Who the hell are the people upstairs, anyway? My boss gets it. If we’re going up against aliens, we can use the know-how.”
Gill scowled at him, yet not in antagonism. “One minute I think you’re smart,” he said, “and the next you’re a dimwit!”
“Eh?”
“What do you think your Minister will do with it if you give it to him?”
Turnbull frowned, gradually eased off. “Eventually it’ll come right back to you, right?”
“Not eventually, immediately. See, my people are your people! I had assumed you knew that. It’s how your boss and I come to know each other. Ministry of Defence. We’re not only on the same side but also the same team. Or maybe you thought I was up here solely for my health?”
Turnbull slowly nodded. “Maybe I should have guessed,” he said, “but you’re not on any list. Which makes you Cosmic. In this capacity, anyway. Top secret. Top top secret, in fact. See, I had you tied up with one or another of the intelligence services.”
“In the right place, at the right time, you’d be right,” said Gill. “We’re all hand in hand anyway. But here there’s not a lot of intelligence to gather. The Castle’s here and that’s about the only clear fact. So I’m MOD. Also, our intelligence agencies are geared for spying against other human beings—not against aliens.”
Turnbull brought out the weapon from its hiding place down the back of the settee. He sniffed suspiciously at the thing, kept it at arm’s length. “What do you make of it?”
“Busted,” said Gill, taking it from him and holding it as before. “It’s power source—its converter, anyway—is damaged. Your bullet.”
“Converter? Power source? Like a battery, you mean?”
Gill shook his head. “Have you ever used a battery-powered shaver? I shouldn’t think you have, not with your chin. Bristles like that would be too much for it. Or can you imagine a battery-powered circular saw? Running on a couple of pencil-slim flashlight batteries? Of course not! No, this thing takes its energy from somewhere else, converts it, releases it destructively here at the tip. It’s like a portable power drill—except it doesn’t need a cable. Its energy is beamed to it. It’s constantly available—like a TV picture or a radio signal. They’re there, just waiting for you to switch on the set. I think so, anyway.”
“Beamed to it,” said Turnbull, scratching his chin. “From the Castle?”
“We can only suppose so, yes.”
“For twenty months they’ve sat up there on that hillside, doing nothing, just checking us out,” said Turnbull thoughtfully. “As far as we know, anyway. So why should they suddenly decide to come on strong now? The media have got used to the idea that they’re friendly observers—if they’re there at all. Was that it, do you think? Lull us into a state of false security? Familiarity breeds contempt?”
“Like a mousetrap?”
“Eh?”
“A mousetrap sits there in the night doing nothing. The mouse has his run, which he knows intimately. All of a sudden there’s this object right in his way, something new, which he never saw before. And it appears to be harmless. It doesn’t do anything. So he approaches it from all angles, cautiously at first—and still it does nothing. Then he spots the food, the trigger. Except he doesn’t know it’s a trigger. He takes the bait, trips the spring, and …”
“Have we tripped some kind of spring?” Turnbull lifted his angular eyebrow a shade higher.
“We’ve brought tactical atomic weapons up here,” said Gill. “I think we can assume they know that. If the Castle contains aliens, that is. I mean, we don’t know that for sure. For an alien, tonight’s visitor looked pretty human to me. And his finger is … a finge
r!” The digit he spoke of was now in a jar in his fridge.
“That’s the other thing I’d meant to ask you,” said Turnbull. “Why?”
“The finger? Why did I want a piece of him? To give to forensic, naturally. Our forensic. Oh, the police will take prints from their bits, no doubt—but myself, I’d like a rather more in-depth study.”
“You mean, just because he looked human, it doesn’t mean he was human.”
“Something like that.” Gill managed a fragile grin. “Hell, you look human!” And before Turnbull could answer: “My guess is that if that finger is from another world … well, there will have to be differences. Small, maybe, but obvious—to someone who knows what he’s looking for.”
Turnbull nodded, said, “And then of course, there’s you.”
“Me?”
“A spring-tripper,” said Turnbull, his eyes glooming on the other.
Gill suddenly felt cold. “Go on.”
“You’ve been here a year. Before that you were up here half a dozen times checking the Castle out and making your reports, until they decided to station you here permanently. Right?”
Gill nodded.
“Whether there are intelligences inside the Castle, or whether it in itself is an artificial intelligence, maybe doesn’t matter. You say it probably knows we’ve brought atomics up here. So maybe it knows that you’re here, too. Maybe it’s been reading you like you’ve been trying to read it … .”
Gill’s telephone rang. It was Turnbull’s boss, asking for him. Turnbull took the phone and listened for a while, and when the Minister had finished filled in some of the details of what had happened at Gill’s place. When their conversation was over, Turnbull replaced the handset and said, “Curiouser and curiouser.”
“Oh?”
“He’s just tasked me to you! Spencer, my boy, you now have a minder all your own!”
Gill was surprised and not a little grateful. The big man knew his job, and in the shortest period of time Gill had been made to feel very vulnerable. His relief showed on his face when he said, “Because of tonight?”
But Turnbull only frowned and half shook his head. “Yes and no,” he said. “The boss will pick us up tomorrow morning and fill us in then. All he’s saying for now is that things are ‘coming to a head.’ The way I see it … you’re an ace card, Spencer. Maybe someone’s just realized that we can’t afford to lose you.”
Gill didn’t attempt to fathom it any further than that. In any case, it only served to verify what he’d suspected for some little time: that indeed things were rapidly coming to a head … .
CHAPTER SIX
Angela Denholm checked herself out in the mirror. The bruising had almost disappeared now from her right eye, but she would continue to wear her dark glasses. With their help, and snug in her new white parka and black ski pants, she would at least feel disguised. She supposed she might only be fooling herself, but there was always the chance that Rod would also be fooled. The new clothing had been the best idea she’d had since running out on him.
She checked the bruising again, the faint, fading, telltale blotch where his fist had struck home, and gave a small, involuntary shudder. She had always loathed physical violence, never would have believed that she’d become just another victim. And yet that’s exactly what had happened to her—or would have. But being a battered wife hadn’t been Angela’s scene. She had more going for her than that. And when finally love had fled, so she’d fled, too.
That had been a little more than three weeks ago, since when she’d been on the run. Pride had stopped her from seeking help, kept her from going to the police, screaming for a divorce; the divorce would come later. Pride and what little loyalty she’d had left. Rod had been warned off more than once already about his drinking; another incident was all it would take for him to lose his job; Angela considered that he’d paid enough in losing her. He was a technician with a local TV station in Edinburgh, and a new job wouldn’t be easy to find. But … it was painful to her that he would be hurting. She hadn’t taken her marriage vows lightly. On the other hand, he’d only be hurting inside. And there’d been times when Angela had hurt all over.
She looked at herself in her bedroom’s full-length mirror and nodded, strangely relieved that she still recognized the woman in there. For a time she’d felt irrevocably changed, but now the old Angela was coming back again. At least married life—life married to Rodney Denholm—had kept her in good trim. Little chance there of becoming fat and contented!
Small, leggy, slim, and pretty, with elfin ears half-hidden in tight black ringlets, a not-quite-perfect mouth, pert nose, and slightly tilted, deep, dark eyes, she looked almost Eurasian and was often taken for it. But in fact she was as English as they come. Or British, anyway, since her father was a Scot. But she’d inherited her mother’s face and slender figure, and mercifully something of her independence, too.
Dressing, putting on her very feminine underthings, Angela felt something of the sadness again, but also a lot of the freedom. Rod would get tired of the chase eventually, and then he’d have a choice. Straighten up and kick the habit permanently, and maybe find someone new who he’d have to treat right—or keep hitting the bottle until it hit him back, and go down and out without a friend in the world. Sober, he could be a most sensitive, even a tender man, but only give him a drink—just one—and everything he kept suppressed would surface on the instant and he’d be all hell let loose. The thing he’d kept most suppressed had been his jealousy … .
The thought of that, Rod’s maniacal jealousy when he’d been drinking—his totally unwarranted, almost homicidal jealousy—drove out the last dregs of sadness. For in the end that was why she’d run: because at times it had been so bad that she’d feared for her life.
Waiting one morning until he’d gone off to work, she’d packed a few things, left their flat in Edinburgh’s Dalkeith Road for the last time and caught a train down to London. She had friends there from her years at university. She had left Rod on a Friday, but by the following weekend he’d tracked her.
First there had been telephone calls: Rod, desperately looking for her, pleading with her friends that if they knew where she was they must tell him. He had been to see her parents, too. Of course, she’d kept them in the picture by telephone right from square one; they’d been supportive and offered her every assistance; when Rod went to see them, they’d played the worried parents (which of course they’d been) for his benefit, or more properly for Angela’s, and kept her whereabouts secret.
Then there had been the long, rambling letters: letters to her friends, explaining to them how sorry he was (wasn’t he always?) but that her leaving had shocked him back onto the rails, the straight and narrow, and all he wanted now. was that she’d forgive him and come back. He would make it all up to her, he promised.
But Angela knew better. She was in hiding and intended to stay that way, for now anyway. The people she was with had their instructions to play dumb and never admit that she was there; Rod’s letters to her, to be forwarded through them, were returned to him unopened with sympathetic little notes saying that they couldn’t be forwarded because it simply wasn’t known where Angela was. All of this because she had needed the time to get herself—her thoughts, emotions, her plans for some kind of future—sorted out.
But then Rod had found her.
She was staying with Siobhan and George Lynch. On the Monday morning ten days after Angela left Edinburgh to travel down to their house in North London, when George drove down early to Finsbury Park to take the first tube train into the city where he worked, Rod had been waiting for him. The station had been almost empty: a bum with his bottle, moaning in a plastic bag stuffed with newspapers; a black workman in coveralls and a headset, jiving with himself at the far end of the platform; and Rodney Denholm, unshaven, with whiskey on his breath, following George from the ticket machines down onto the platform and grabbing him there. George wasn’t much physically, had never been a fighter to
speak of … but at least when Rod was through with him he’d managed to telephone Angela and warn her. Apparently her husband had been keeping a watch on the house since Saturday evening.
Now, shrugging into her parka, Angela thought back on that telephone conversation with the husband of her best friend. Siobhan hadn’t been out of bed yet (thank God! For she was the hysterical type) and so Angela had left her breakfast to answer the phone herself. If it had been Rod, she could simply jiggle the handset about a bit and put it down, to give the impression that the telephone wasn’t working properly or that the connection was a bad one. Except it hadn’t been Rod but George.
“Angela?” his tinny voice had croaked. “You’d better get—uh!—out of there, love, and run for it! Rod’s—uh!—here, and he’s just had a go at me!” George had been out of breath, sounded like he was in pain. Angela’s heart had almost frozen inside her.
“George? Has he hurt you? Could you smell drink on him? Oh, God, he’s been drinking! Where are you?”
“Finsbury Park,” his choking voice had come again. “God! He has fingers like a steel vise, that bloke! He accused us of having an affair, you and me, and said he could kill me! But he wouldn’t because it’s you he wants. If he killed me, they’d put him away, and you’d be free to go on running around and, well, fucking whoever you want!”
“George!”
“That’s what the bastard said!” George had rasped. “He accused you of being—uh!—a bloody vampire, said you’d suck any man you could dry as a stick. So he was going on a crusade for all men. He was going to get you and settle with you for good! He pitied me, he said, because I was just the latest in your long line of victims, and he wanted to know why my ‘poor cow of a wife’ wasn’t complaining about it. Or maybe I was having both of you away in the—uh!—same bed.”
“George, but you know none of that’s true!”
