My Brother

by Charles Sheffield

  “Here.” He put it down on my lap. “Now you can stop yer bloody grumbling.”

  I nodded my head towards my bound hands. “You’ll have to feed me. I can’t move.”

  “Like hell.” His face turned red with anger. “I’m not your bloody wet nurse. Hold still.” He took out his knife and held it carefully in his teeth, while he worked the knots on my right arm loose enough to move freely. “Now, you can work that the rest of the way for yourself. Don’t try anything, though, or you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

  He stood about two feet away from the chair, holding the knife lightly. I could sense from the look in his eye that he wished I would give him a reason to use it on me. I carefully worked at the loosened bonds until I had my hand free, then forced down the milk and the food. It was an effort — Pudd’n had fed me more than I really needed — but at last I was done.

  “Right,” Dixie said. “Sit still. I’m going to tie you up again.”

  “Wait a minute.” I fished in my shirt pocket and took out the pillbox. “I have to take two of these.”

  “Well, get on an’ do it.”

  “I have to have water,” I said. He had used the last of the little jug of water in his whiskey.

  “Yer bloody moron.” I thought for a moment he was going to hit me, then he pulled back. “Why didn’t you tell me that before I went downstairs? I’m not your bloody slave.”

  He stood furious for a moment, then turned and walked out. I estimated that I had thirty clear seconds. I took three capsules out of the box and tugged them apart with my teeth, holding each one in my right hand. My plan had been to drop the powder from them into his drink, but his glass was way out of reach, over on the piano. All I could do was tip the contents of each capsule into the open bottle of whiskey, then stuff the empty containers in my pocket and give the bottle a quick shake with my thumb over the open top.

  I was just finished when Dixie came back with a cup of water. He didn’t even watch me take my pills, which was just as well — I’m not the world’s expert on palming things. He seemed much more interested in his drink, and as I watched he poured about another inch into the glass.

  “How about a drop of that for me?” I asked. I didn’t want him looking too closely at what he was drinking.

  “You must be kidding.” He sat down in front of me and deliberately drank from the glass. “I wouldn’t have given you any of that bloody lot if it wasn’t for Scouse tellin’ us to look after yer. He doesn’t want you dead tomorrow — he has his own games to play.”

  As he spoke he was looking at my free right arm and touching the knife on the piano stool next to him. I realized he had deliberately left me untied, hoping I would give him an excuse to cut me. It was a bad few minutes. His face was flushed with drink but his eye still had a glassy, calculating look.

  What did the drug do when it was combined with alcohol? I hoped it would be strongly sedative. Alcohol is a depressant, and the drug was supposed to damp brain activity. But what would I do if the mixture turned Dixie into a raving madman?

  He finished the drink in his glass and glared at me with a fixed, cunning expression as he poured a refill. “Just you wait, you bleeder,” he said suddenly. “Des was one of my best mates. I’ll get you for ’im. You’ll wish you’d never been born. Just you wait.”

  He stood up unsteadily and did a shuffling dance step over to the piano and back again. His coordination was badly off. He realized it and stood there frowning, staring at me again.

  ” ’Sgetting late. Better get you tied up again, an’ relax.” He picked up the knife and came closer. “Move wrong now, an’ that’ll be it. Put yer arm flat on the chair.”

  His eyes were blurry and blinking, but the knife was at my throat. He was still being cautious. He wound the rope one-handed around my wrist until it was too tight for me to move more than a couple of inches, and only then laid the knife aside to finish tying me.

  “Not so tight,” I said. “That’s hurting.”

  He pulled viciously on the cord and made a final knot. Then he picked up the knife again and leaned close towards me. His eyes were only inches from mine, and his warm, whiskey-laden breath blew into my face.

  “You’ll know what hurtin’ is soon.” He brought the knife slowly up along my neck, drawing the tip steadily over my chin and cheek. I flinched as the point came higher, and squeezed my right eye tight shut. The sharp point was on my eyelid. I could feel the tremble in Dixie ’s hand transmitted through the steel to my eyeball. I sat motionless, my pulse throbbing in my throat.

  Dixie moved the point horizontally along my eye, then at last drew back. “Just wait ’til Scouse has done with you. Then it’ll be my turn.” He straightened, and I took what felt like my first breath in minutes.

  He lurched backwards to the stool, looked confusedly around him, and set off unsteadily for the door. He did not speak again as he went through, but I heard the key turn in the lock. Far gone as he might be, he remembered his orders. I waited a couple of minutes, then moved my head forward. If anything was to be done, now was the time for it. I couldn’t wait too long — Pudd’n might come back. When Dixie was tying me again he must have already been feeling unsteady, and instead of tying the knots on the underside of the chair arm, as Pudd’n had been careful to do, he had taken the easier path of tying them on top, on the upper side of my wrist. And this time he had left the light on. I could get my teeth to work on them.

  It seemed to take forever, gnawing and tugging at spit-covered, slippery rope until the knots began to loosen and slide open. My right hand took about ten minutes to free. Then I could work on the unseen knots below the left arm of the chair. I was impatient, and that slowed me down. It was another twenty minutes before I was able to stand up, free of the chair.

  I took two slow steps towards the door, then stood shaking. For the first time in my life I had real sympathy for Hans Andersen’s mermaid, the one who felt as though she was walking on sharp knives. My circulation was coming back, and at first I couldn’t bear to walk. Finally I managed to stumble over to look at the door.

  It was panelled, heavy oak with an embossed metal facing. The lock was massive, with a big, old-fashioned keyhole. I tried the handle for a moment, as quietly as I could, and confirmed that Dixie had locked it when he left. Unless someone would provide me with a fire axe, that wasn’t a possible way out. I went to the window and pulled back the thick drapes.

  I had guessed from the trip down to the kitchen that the music room window would be twelve to fifteen feet above the ground. It was more like twenty — I didn’t know how the ground sloped near the house. The window opened easily enough, to leave me staring down into a dimly-seen patch of bushes and flowers.

  Too far to drop? I poised myself on the sill, inched forward slowly, and wondered if my injured leg could take the strain. I leaned out farther, holding the wooden window frame tightly in my left hand.

  Too high!

  I had just decided that when the traitorous fingers of my left hand relaxed and I was falling outward into the darkness, to land heavily on a rose bush and a bed of spiky flowers.

  Then it was up on my feet as fast as I could, hobble around to the front of the house, and pause there to decide how to manage the next step. A Fiat stood out by the front entrance. My wishful thinking of keys in the ignition vanished quickly — I couldn’t even open a car door. But standing by the front of the house in a metal rack was an old bicycle. I was on it in a second and off down the long drive, my knees coming up almost to my chin. The bike was meant for somebody a foot shorter, but I wasn’t going to wait to raise the saddle. The house stood midway on a long hill, and I went swooping down dangerously fast, hugging the curb.

  A police station was the logical place to go, but I was past logic. All I wanted to do was find a safe place to hide. That was the instinct to keep me going until I found my way to the Underground (Osterley Station, out near the end of the Piccadilly Line), heading back to my flat. Then I realized that wasn’t
a safe place any more. Instead I checked into a hotel in Knightsbridge, signed my name as Jan Dussek, went up to my room, and unravelled.

  Some might call it shock — delayed terror sounds more accurate. But when I woke up it was nearly ten-thirty in the morning, and there were energetic sounds of cleaning coming from the corridor. I sat up groggily and took stock.

  One jacket covering a cut and tattered shirt. One pair of trousers, smeared with mud and oil from the bicycle chain. Muddy shoes. A wallet containing about a hundred and twenty pounds. And a box of pills. With those assets I carried a strong desire to stay away from my flat. So what next? Only one hope left.

  The call to Tess didn’t start out well. I hadn’t called her last night, as she had suggested in her note. Why not? She had stayed in and waited.… Her voice didn’t have the warmth in it that I wanted to hear.

  Well, I said…

  I talked for at least five minutes, with an increasingly perplexed silence at the other end of the line.

  “But where’s the house?” she asked, when I ran out of steam. I could hear the unspoken comment that went with it: Can you prove what you’re saying?

  “Near Osterley Tube Station.”

  “You could find it again?”

  “I think so. But I’m damned if I’m going to try. Tess, those lot are dangerous. If I go back there, I’ll want a police escort. And I’m not sure they’ll believe me — you know what Sir Westcott will say.”

  “I can guess.” There was a long silence at the other end of the phone. I could visualize the frown on her forehead and the lower lip pinched between her teeth.

  “Don’t go back there,” she said at last. “They know you got away, so they’ll have made sure there are no signs left.” (She believed me! I felt a huge sense of relief.) “And don’t go back to your place, either. They might be watching there.”

  “I need clothes — I don’t even have a check book on me.”

  “Leave that to me. I’ll go to your place this afternoon.”

  “It’s too dangerous.” My hand started to shake when I thought of Dixie getting his hands on Tess. “If they’re watching—”

  “I won’t be on my own, you nit. I’ll ask a friendly copper to go in with me — but I’ll need you to call your landlord to let me in.”

  “Tess, I can’t let you do it. You’ve no idea what Scouse and his thugs are like. If they get their hands on you—”

  “I’ll call you late this afternoon, when I’m all done. You stay there, or go into Central London — that’ll be safe enough. What’s your number at the hotel?”

  I argued for another minute, and got nowhere. Tess was using the same manner on me that she reserved for uncooperative patients.

  “Don’t ask for me,” I said, as she was about to hang up. “I’m registered as Jan Dussek.”

  “Who? ”

  “Dussek. He was a pianist back in Beethoven’s time. It’s the first name I could think of. Oh, another thing. The pills that Sir Westcott gave me.”

  “What about them?”

  “Will you ask him if they’re Nymphs?”

  “If they’re what?”

  “Nymphs. I don’t know what they are either. Ask him, all right?”

  “I’ll do it.” But I could tell from her voice that my overall credibility was slumping.

  I was left with the rest of the day to kill. For a while I lay on the bed in my room, thinking of Scouse and his louts and doing a slow burn. To get what they wanted, they were quite prepared to torture, kidnap, threaten, and kill. The last one wasn’t a certainty, but I didn’t like the way that Scouse had talked about Valnora Warren — the suggestion of past tense about it. To find out what Leo had been doing (What had Leo been doing?) they would crush Lionel Salkind like a beetle, casually and easily. Well, if they thought they could do that they had better think again. I was still an independent agent, and I had one resource they couldn’t dream of. From now on, I wouldn’t just note any actions that seemed to reflect Leo’s memories or responses — I would seek them out, follow up on them, and do my best to interpret them.

  My thoughts had run on haphazardly, but by the time I sat up on my bed my mind was made up. I wouldn’t be totally passive, running and hiding. I would fight back and look for my own answers. I took a long, hot bath, then went out of the hotel and bought a new shirt and new pants. The day was pleasant, warm enough to encourage me to go into the City center and stroll about in the sunshine.

  And it was there, while I sat on a bench in the quiet of St. James Park, that Leo with my assistance finally scored a direct hit. When I stood outside the bookstore I had something to work on. Over the hills and far away — India — flower perfumes, and secrecy, and awful sexual excitement. The strength of those feelings almost swamped me, but they also offered the direction for my next actions. By the time I went back to the hotel I knew what I had to do.

  Tess’s message was waiting for me there. Her house, any time after seven. She had my case and everything I needed. And a surprise.

  Tess lived alone in a two-bedroom house in Henley , too big for her but kept for its garden — her pride and joy. I went in the back way, past neatly tied raspberry canes and flaming rows of salvias, on to peer in through the kitchen window and knock on the pane. Tess opened the back door and let me in without a word. She gave me a quick hug once I was inside the door, then stepped back out of reach. Her face was anxious and the frown lines were deeper than ever.

  “He believes you now,” she said. “I’ve never seen Sir Westcott look so surprised. He hates to be wrong.”

  “You told him everything?”

  “Not at first — I knew he thought you had imagined everything, and he’d say you were giving us another tall story. So after we finished the wards I asked him right out: if he had any idea what ‘Nymphs’ were.”

  “He told you?”

  “Not at first. He looked at me pop-eyed, and said he’d be buggered, and where had I heard that word? He thought there must have been a bad breach in the security system.”

  Tess led the way through into the living room, motioned me to the couch and seated herself on a chair opposite. Her posture said a lot. Feet neatly together, hands on knees. She didn’t want me close until she got this off her chest.

  “So those pills he gave me really are Nymphs,” I said. “Dammit, Sir Westcott told me—”

  “They’re not Nymphs.” Tess nodded her head towards the side table, inviting me to help myself to the coffee and sandwiches there. “He told you the truth, you have a new synthetic neurotransmitter in that pillbox. Nymphs are something different — a secret shared by the police, a few doctors, and international security. They’re capsules, and they look like the ones you have — blue, usually — and they’re the hottest and worst illegal drug anybody knows about. The papers haven’t printed a word about them, though they must suspect that something is happening, just from the hospital reports. Sir Westcott is on some sort of blue ribbon royal panel studying the physical and mental effects — that’s why he knows all about it. He gave me a choice, either I’d tell him I didn’t remember a word he was going to say, or I’d be tied up in secrecy agreements for weeks.”

  I leaned forward. “Tess, they were all set to torture me last night. If Nymphs are a big secret, it’s one that’s a lot less well-kept than Sir Westcott thinks. Dixie thought those pills were Nymphs and proved I must be Leo. The crooks know all about them.”

  She nodded. “Sure they do, some of them. They’re part of the distribution system. The drug is made somewhere in the East — India , or Afghanistan , or Pakistan — and finds its way into this country from abroad. It’s synthetic, but producing it is difficult — thank Heaven. It’s a derivative of Salvarsan — a dihydroxy-arsenobenzene hydrochloride, one of the old treatments for syphilis. That’s too much of a mouthful for anybody, so the pills are mostly misnamed Nymphetamines — Nymphs, for short.”

  “But what do they do to you? They can’t be like heroin or cocaine. Dixie said
I’d only be using them for one thing, and he said Zan was too old for them.”

  “He was right.” Tess sighed. “Can’t you guess, with a name like that? Nymphetamines don’t have much effect at all on adults. They affect children. They induce sexual desire and physical arousal responses — sensitivity, lubrication and increased blood supply for the vaginal mucous membranes — in prepubescent girls.”

  I sat there with my mouth hanging open. “I don’t believe it. You think that people would buy those pills and give them…”

  I didn’t need to ask the question. I knew the answer. When I was seventeen years old and on my first concert tour, I played a series of two-piano works with Duncan Casimir. He was seventy-two years old, he drank too much, and his playing was terrible, but he was still considered a grand old man of English music. I saw him when the young girls came crowding around us at the end of the concerts. He was practically drooling. And it wasn’t over the ones I thought were attractive, the sixteen and seventeen year olds. He had his bloodshot old eyes on the tens and under. I’d seen the same thing a hundred times since, what old Casimir would delicately refer to as a “refined taste for slightly unripe fruit.” Nymphs wouldn’t lack for a market.

  “… so your brother must have been mixed up with Nymphs, somehow,” Tess saying. “Maybe he was trying to find out where they come from, or perhaps how they get to the west.”

  “No, that wasn’t it.” I leaned back without thinking, and winced when Dixie ’s cigarette burn pressed on the back of the settee. “That’s just what Leo wasn’t doing, I know that from last night. Dixie said I had to be Leo when he found the Nymphs, because no ordinary person would be carrying them. But Scouse saw past that. He said if they were Nymphs I wouldn’t have carried them into the country with me, and anyway that’s not what he was after. Leo was involved in something different — the Belur Package, whatever that is. But not with Nymphs. What else did Sir Westcott say about them?”

  “Not too much. There have been four hundred reported cases in this country, with ages from seven to twelve. He thinks that the drug travels overland from Athens , and comes there either from Turkey or one of the Arab countries.”