by Brian Lumley
If this was what experts in tropical diseases were supposed to look like…well, it had them beat all to hell!
Jake was wearing a shirt, a flying jacket, jeans, and cowboy boots; in fact he looked something of a “cowboy” to the crew of the air-sea rescue chopper. Long-legged, he had narrow hips and a small backside, but the rest of him wasn’t small. He was well over six feet tall—maybe six four, if you included the heels of those boots—and had long arms to match his legs. His eyes were chestnut-brown; likewise his hair which he wore swept back and braided into a pigtail. His hair wasn’t all brown, however, but had contrasting, even startling shocks of white at the temples: this was a recent thing, a change that had taken place in him almost overnight. His face was lean and hollow-cheeked, and he looked like a week of HMS Invincible’s meals wouldn’t do him any harm…but on the other hand the extra weight would certainly slow him down; and Jake Cutter looked fast. His lips were thin (some might even say cruel) and when he smiled it was hard to make out if there was any real humour in it. His jaw was angular and thinly scarred on the left side, and his nose had been broken high on the bridge so that it hung like a sheer cliff—like the straight strong nose of a Native American—instead of projecting. But despite his lean and hungry look, Jake’s shoulders were broad, his chest deep, and there was more than enough of strength in him both physical and psychological. Indeed, his mental powers bordered on the metaphysical, occasionally crossing those borders into realms that other men had never dreamed of visiting and certainly wouldn’t care to.
As for Jake’s companion:
The Old Lidesci was short, barrel-bodied, and almost simian in the great length of his arms. His lank hair, once jet-black, was greying now and in places turning white; it framed a leathery, weather-beaten face with a flattened, suspicious nose that sat uncomfortably over a mouth that was missing too many teeth. As for the ones that he’d kept: they were uneven and as stained as old ivory. But under shaggy and expressive eyebrows Lardis’s dark brown watchful eyes glittered his mind’s agility and defied the ever-encroaching infirmities of his body.
And if Jake had seemed a little cowboyish in boots, jeans, and his deliberately contrived casual manner, then what was the rescue helicopter’s crew supposed to make of Lardis? The Lidesci’s mode of dress was outlandish, like a cross between that of a frontiersman out of the Old West and a European Gypsy of that same era! It was all greens, browns, and greys; all tassles and tiny silver bells that jingled when he moved, so that the overall impression was that of a total outdoorsman, a fighting man, and a wanderer in endless woodlands. As if to verify that last: in a cutaway sheath under his left arm, Lardis carried a wicked-looking, razor-sharp machete, its time-blackened ironwood grip etched with several rows of notches…
While the crew had spent a little time wondering about Jake and Lardis, Commander Argyle and the larger E-Branch contingent aboard the hunter-killer had descended to within thirty feet of the stem of the stranded vessel and were looking through binoculars into the spacious bridge. For perhaps thirty seconds Jake watched the jet-copter hovering there, fanning the air over the stricken ship. But then, as the aircraft suddenly gained altitude, performing a slow spiral up and outward, Trask’s voice was again patched through to the rescue chopper. And if anything it was harsher than ever:
“Where’s that rescue tackle? I want you to get that man off there, and I do mean right now!”
“Fine,” Jake sent back, “but the crew needs Argyle’s say-so on that.”
Ten seconds ticked by, and then Commander Argyle’s voice—stuttering and quite obviously shocked—said, “G-g-get him off there. Get that man off that b-bloody ship, and be bloody quick about it! But listen in: no matter how long it takes, no one is to go down there! He has to make it on his own.”
And once again Trask, saying, “Jake, the same rules are in force. If he isn’t what he would seem to be, let Lardis handle it his way. Is that understood?”
“Only too well,” said Jake. “Over and out…”
3
The Trouble With Harry
DOWN BELOW, ON THE SHIELDING COLLAR OF the exhaust array, the rescue bucket had swung to and fro in front of the survivor’s face half a dozen times without him seeming to notice it. But as finally it collided with him, almost sending him sprawling, he appeared to wake up. Then, looking up at the chopper sixty feet overhead, and fending off the bucket and harness as once again it made a swing at him, he reached up an imploring hand, blinked his eyes, and seemed to be trying to say something.
The winchman directed the pilot on his headset: “Take her down just a few more feet. Good! Now hold it steady—hold it right there!” And as the gear clattered down and skittered on the collar, jerking this way and that immediately in front of the survivor, a second petty officer with a loud-hailer called down:
“Don’t try to grab the bucket or it may haul you off your feet. Just sit yourself in it—your whole body weight—and adjust the harness straps. Then try to sit back and hang on to the chains. That’ll help you feel secure. And don’t worry, we won’t let you fall.”
The “bucket” was more like one of those aerial chairs that children ride at fairgrounds. Suspended from four leather-clad chains, it had a back and sides but no legs. A webbing harness was fitted to the interior, with a safety belt dangling loose. And like an aerial chair, even a child could see how to use it…or should be able to. But the man below was in shock.
As the bucket danced in front of him—now bouncing on the collar, now twitching to knee height, finally swinging out and away from him—he took a dazed, stumbling step toward it and tried to grab at it. After that…it was only sheer good fortune that saved him; one more staggering step would have taken him to the rim of the collar some twenty feet above the bridge deck, and the rescue tackle might easily have dragged him over the edge. But as it happened the chair spun around him, struck him behind the knees, and scooped him up.
And slumped in the bucket, with his arms and legs dangling loose—and likewise the straps of the harness, which he hadn’t fastened—he was winched toward safety, or to what would have been safety in any normal or routine rescue situation. But even as the gears wound him in and he flopped there, with his vacant eyes staring up at his rescuers from a pale, dirty, slack-jawed face, so Trask’s harsh, apparently emotionless voice was in the crew’s ears, telling them:
“From now on you do exactly as Jake Cutter and the Old Lidesci tell you to do. They are acting on my orders, on authority conveyed to me by your Gunnery Commander Argyle. The man you’re bringing up from that ship may or may not be infected with this…this terrible disease. But the old man called Lardis is the world’s foremost expert in such things and he will know. In any event his decision—and whatever action he takes—has my full backing. Anyone attempting to interfere will not only be liable to severe disciplinary action, he may well be placing the lives of your entire crew in jeopardy!”
The rescue crew’s members glanced at each other but made no comment, and the bucket came up within reach of the hatch. Then Lardis yelled across to the man in the bucket: “You, I want you to give me your hand. Reach out and give it now!” He leaned out of the hatch on his safety strap and offered a gnarled, purple-veined left hand to the survivor. The fingers of that hand were heavy with rings of purest silver.
The man in the bucket looked at Lardis, then at his hand. A flicker of vague recognition passed over his face, and his lips formed the word “Szgany!” But still his arms continued to hang loose in the downdraft, and in another moment his eyes had gone vacant again.
Lardis glanced at the three petty officers. “Swing him in a little, but carefully.” And to Jake: “In the event he makes any sudden move—tries to jump aboard—you know what to do.”
Nodding his understanding, Jake took out a specially modified 9 mm Browning automatic from an inside pocket of his flying jacket and cocked it—at which the fair-haired, freckled petty officer gasped and said, “What the fuck…!?”
“Just do as Lardis said,” Jake told him, aiming his weapon directly between the eyes of the man in the bucket. And without further protest (for the time being at least), and beginning to understand just how serious this business was beyond any normal course of duty, the winchman swung the pulley arm in toward the hatch.
In that selfsame moment the survivor moved! He grabbed hold of the Old Lidesci’s hand (but so suddenly that Jake almost shot him), gave a wild inarticulate cry, and babbled something which to Jake sounded utterly unintelligible.
“What did he say?” said Jake anxiously. “What did he say?”
“He called me ‘father,’” Lardis grunted. “Said he’d cried out to me and was glad that I’ve answered his call. Very complimentary! He doesn’t seem to be afraid of silver, either. But we’re not finished yet.”
Using his free hand, he took out a small aerosol dispenser which he passed to Jake. And drawing his machete, he said, “he has my hand, this one, but if he should squeeze it too hard—perhaps with a fiend’s strength—then I shall have his!”
Jake leaned out a little on his line, showed the dispenser to the man in the bucket, and said, “This shouldn’t do you any harm. Close your eyes and don’t breathe for a moment.”
Continuing to cling to Lardis’s hand, the man looked to him for reassurance. “Do as he says,” Lardis told him. And dangling there on thin air, the survivor closed his eyes.
Jake sprayed him in the face, a full burst of two or three seconds…and nothing happened. But the rescue crew wrinkled their noses and again looked at each other. What, garlic? Well, something that smelled like garlic, anyway.
The man in the bucket opened his eyes, took a deep breath, didn’t seem at all affected.
And Lardis said, “Now the acid test. Except it isn’t acid, but blood!” And without pause he slid the razor-sharp blade of his weapon lightly over the back of his own wrist. And showing the survivor what he’d done—the slow drip of his blood into the abyss—he said:
“No, I’m not your father. But I readily understand why you would cry out to him. So perhaps we can be brothers, you and I? Perhaps we already are, of a sort. ‘Szgany’ you called me. Aye, and you’re right. So what do you say? Can we be blood brothers, my friend from this world’s so-called ‘old’ country, and doubtless from a long line of Szgany forefathers?”
The other said nothing, simply watched as Jake sprayed the blade of Lardis’s machete…before it descended to the survivor’s wrist and cut a thin red line there!
And the freckled petty officer burst out, “Now what kind of fucking voodoo barbarism is this!?” Reaching past Jake, he made to grab at Lardis…and felt the barrel of Jake’s gun digging into his ribs. And:
“Let it be!” Jake warned him through clenched teeth. “What? Didn’t you hear what Trask said? Man, you’re under orders.”
“But…but this is just a very frightened man!” the crewman protested, drawing back.
“Just a man, aye,” Lardis agreed, with a curt nod. “Only a man—but a damned lucky one!” And, as he sheathed his machete, “You can bring him in now.”
Meanwhile the survivor had done absolutely nothing. He continued to sit there, looking unemotionally at his wrist without really seeing anything. And if that could be called a reaction, it was his only one.
They swung the rescue tackle in, secured it and closed the hatch, then gentled the rescued man out of the tangle of chains and webbing. He immediately toppled into Lardis’s arms, and the old man fell back with him onto the crew’s padded bench and sat there cradling him.
“We have him,” Jake told Trask on his headset. “He seems to be okay.”
“Has he said anything?” Trask’s voice had lost something of its sharp edge.
“Said anything?” Jake answered. “Hell, no, nothing I could understand. Just looking at him, I’d say he still doesn’t believe he’s alive!”
“Well, don’t let him say anything,” Trask said. “Don’t even ask him anything, not until we’re back aboard Invincible and we can talk to him in private.”
“Roger that,” said Jake. And to Lardis: “Is he okay?”
“Oh, yes,” the old man answered, wonderingly. “In fact he’s already asleep!”
“Probably for the first time in three days,” said Jake.
“Probably, aye,” Lardis replied gruffly. “And certainly for the first time in three long nights…”
Aboard the aircraft carrier Invincible, Trask’s contingent had bunks next to a large stateroom used for ship’s orders groups. They also had use of the stateroom, which was where the medics saw to the survivor.
On landing, however, Trask had been called to see the Captain. Which meant that he arrived at the stateroom some fifteen minutes later. Briefly looking inside and on seeing the medics, he called his people out into the cramped privacy of the corridor, all except Lardis who stayed with the survivor.
And Trask was plainly bitter as he told his colleagues, “We have to go back to the Evening Star.”
“We what?” said Liz, very obviously concerned. “Are you saying I missed someone else? Ben, I can’t see how that’s possible. Okay, I know I overlooked the survivor, but in all that horror, confusion, and mindsmog…I mean, he was just one small human mind—that’s if you can call that crawling void a mind! But I swear that while he was being rescued I scanned the entire ship stem to stern, and—”
“—This has nothing to do with survivors.” Trask shook his head, cutting her off. “It’s a safe bet that there aren’t going to be any more of those. But the Captain’s had ‘a request’ from our Minister Responsible, which of course was relayed to Invincible through the Admiralty. And the Admiralty, not being quite as ‘diplomatic’ as our Old Man, has made it an order.”
“We’ve been ordered back to that ship?” Goodly spoke up in his typically high-pitched, piping voice. “But why? The ship’s doomed, Ben. I’ve already seen it going down. It will happen!”
“I know,” said Trask. “And we’ve got to ensure we’re not on board when it does! But that’s not the worst of it.”
“So what is the worst of it?” said David Chung, nervously.
Scowling, Trask leaned back against a bulkhead, scratched his forehead, and said, “As if we haven’t enough on our hands, now there’s this.” And then, resignedly: “People, it seems that someone in high places—someone who should have known better, if not our Minister Responsible then maybe one of his superiors, possibly the Prime Minister himself—has let something of what we did on Krassos and what we’re trying to do on HMS Invincible slip. That would be bad enough, but it seems it’s slipped all the way to some high-profile boffin at Porton Down.”
“Porton Down?” Liz frowned—then opened her eyes wide and gasped. She was plainly shocked.
Jake glanced from face to face and saw the same expression on all of them. “What?” he said. “Porton Down? Isn’t that some kind of—I don’t know—some kind of research establishment where they mess about with…with…?” But there he paused, for he’d suddenly remembered what they messed about with.
Trask nodded his bleak corroboration. “Yes, I suppose it’s accurate to say they ‘mess about’ down there in Wiltshire, for certainly they handle some of the messiest stuff on this small planet. We’re talking about the Porton Down Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research. And that same person in high places—the bloody idiot—has agreed with them that we should get them a sample!”
“A sample?” David Chung had backed off a pace. “A sample of what? Don’t tell me they—”
“But I am telling you,” Trask answered. “And it’s not only a sample they want but preferably a live one! Oh, if it was up to me Ian’s cruise missiles would be on their way right now—and the Evening Star on her way, straight to the bottom! But now that the Admiralty’s involved it’s no longer up to me. If we don’t go in—and I do have the right to refuse, as the message makes plain—then the Navy will do the job their way. But do you think I’m going to allow th
at to happen?”
“Not a snowball’s chance in hell,” said Jake, fully in the picture now. “The idea of a thing like that getting loose on a ship of war like Invincible…it doesn’t bear thinking about. There’s more sheer destructive firepower on this ship than was used in both world wars!”
“That’s right,” said Trask. “And a lot more than enough to start World War Three! So since we’re the only ones who really understand what we’re up against—”
“We’re going in,” said Liz, with a small shudder.
“But not you,” said Trask. “Not this time.”
“But—” she began to protest.
“No buts about it.” Trask shook his head determinedly. “You put ten years on me when Vavara got hold of you on Krassos, and frankly I’ve no years left to spare. Anyway, this won’t be like anything we’ve ever done before. On the Australian job, most of those vampires we tackled had Wamphyri or lieutenant overseers. They knew what they were doing. Likewise on Krassos. This time, the poor creatures we’ll be dealing with are barely thralls…not even that, for only three days ago they were people holidaying in the Med. Now they’re undead in the Med, and the ones who changed them are no longer here to offer them any kind of guidance. So if we should be attacked en masse—”
“It will be a slaughter,” said Jake. “And it’ll be us doing the slaughtering. We’ll be armed, and they won’t be. We’ll know what we’re about, and they’ll still be coming to terms with the unknown, the utterly horrific.”
But Liz shook her head. “They know what they are,” she said. “Oh, they’re confused for now, terrified as yet…but they do know. And that hideous hunger is growing in them. Down there in the dark, in the bowels of that ship—all eight decks—we’ll look like so much fresh meat to them.”
