The Source

by Brian Lumley

  The creature’s gasses worked on him like an anaesthetic. Hardly knowing he was losing consciousness, Vyotsky blacked out …

  For Jazz Simmons, “in the thick of it” meant about five seconds in which to make up his mind; it was what might have been if Zek Föener hadn’t been there to advise him. He’d made his mind up in two seconds, and as shadows began separating from the main shadow of the cliff was on the point of turning decision to action when she cautioned him with: “Jazz—don’t shoot!”

  “What!” He was incredulous. The shadows were men who came loping to surround the pair. “Don’t shoot? Do you know these people?”

  “I know they won’t harm us—” she breathed, “that we’re more valuable to them alive than dead—and that if you fire a single shot you’ll not live to hear its echoes! There’ll be a half-dozen arrows and spears lined up on you right now. Probably on me, too.”

  Jazz put up his gun, but slowly, grudgingly. “This is what’s called faith in your friends,” he growled, without humour. And he looked at the wary, crouching gang of men who surrounded them. One of them finally straightened up, stuck his chin out, addressed Zek. He spoke in a harsh gabble, a dialect or tongue which for all the world Jazz felt he should recognize. And Zek answered in a tongue he did recognize. Recognition as least, if nothing more. It was a very basic, somewhat disjointed Romanian!

  “Ho, Arlek Nunescu!” she said, and: “Tear down the mountains and let the sun melt the castles of the Wamphyri, but what’s this!? Do you waylay and molest fellow Travellers?”

  Now that Jazz knew the tongue, he could more readily concentrate on understanding it. His knowledge of the Romantic languages was slight but not entirely without value. Some of it came from his father, a little less from his later academic studies, the rest he supposed from instinct; but he’d always had a “thing” for languages anyway.

  The man Arlek—indeed, all of these men ringing them in, and others where they now came out of hiding—were Gypsies. That was Jazz’s first impression: that they were Romany. It was stamped into them and just as recognizable as it would be in the world now left behind, on the other side of the Gate. Dark-haired, jingling, lean and swarthy, they wore their hair long and greased and their clothes loosely and with something of style and flair. The one thing about them that struck a wrong chord was the fact that several of them carried crossbows, and others were armed with sharpened hardwood staves. Apart from that, Jazz had seen the like of these people in countries all over the world—the old world, anyway.

  Gypsies, tinkers, wandering metalworkers, musicians and … fortune tellers?

  “Tear down the mountains, aye,” Arlek answered her greeting now, speaking more slowly, thoughtfully. “You know the things to say, Zekintha, because you steal them from the minds of the Travellers! But we’ve been saying ‘tear down the mountains’ as long as men remember, which is a very long time, and they’re still standing. And while the mountains are there the Wamphyri remain in their castles. And so we wander all our lives, because to remain in one place is to die. I have read the future, Zekintha, and if we shelter you you’ll bring down disaster on Lardis and his band. But if we give you into the hands of the Wamphyri—”

  “Hah!” her tone was scornful. “You’re brave with Lardis Lidesci away in the west, seeking a new camp for you where the Wamphyri won’t raid. And how will you explain this to him when he returns? How will you tell him you plotted to give me away? What, you’d give away a woman to appease your greatest enemies and make them stronger? The act of a coward, Arlek!”

  Arlek took a deep breath. He drew himself up, took a pace toward her and raised his hand as if to strike. A dark flush had made his face darker yet. Jazz lowered the muzzle of his weapon until it touched Arlek’s shoulder, pointing into his left ear. “Don’t,” he warned in the man’s own tongue. “From what I’ve seen of you I don’t much care for you, Arlek, but if you make me kill you I’ll die, too.” He hoped the words he’d used made sense.

  Apparently they did. Arlek backed off, called forward two of his men. They approached Jazz and he showed them his teeth in a cold grin, showed them the gun, too.

  “Let them have it,” Zek said.

  “I was thinking about it,” he answered out of the corner of his mouth.

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “Please give them the gun!”

  “Does your telepathy let you walk naked in lions’ dens?” he asked her. One of the Gypsies had taken hold of the barrel of the SMG, the other’s hand closed on Jazz’s wrist. Their eyes were deep, dark, alert. Jazz was aware that crossbow bolts were trained on him, but still he asked: “Well? It’s your show, Zek.”

  “We can’t go back to Starside,” she quickly answered him, “and the Travellers guard the way to Sunside. Even if we got out of this—got away from them—they’d find us again eventually. So give them the gun. We’re safe for now, at least.”

  “Against my better judgement,” he growled. “But really I suppose there’s nothing else for it.” He released the magazine and slipped it into his pocket, handed over the gun.

  Arlek smiled crookedly. “That, too,” he pointed at Jazz’s pocket. “And the rest of your … belongings.”

  Hearing the language spoken, using it, was inspirational. Jazz’s talent for tongues searched out and found him a few words. “You’re asking too much, Traveller,” he said. “I’m a free man, like you. More free, for I make no deals with the Wamphyri so that I may live.”

  Arlek was taken aback. To Zek he said: “Does he read the thoughts in men’s heads, too?”

  “I hear only my own thoughts,” Jazz spoke first, “and I speak my own words. Don’t talk about me, talk to me.”

  Arlek faced him squarely. “Very well,” he said. “Give us your weapons, your various … things. We take them so that you may not use them against us. You are a stranger, from Zekintha’s world; so much is obvious from your dress and your weapons. Therefore, why should we trust you?”

  “Why should anyone trust you!?” Zek cut in, as Arlek’s men began taking Jazz’s equipment. “You betray your own leader while he’s away seeking safe places!”

  To give them their due, some of the Travellers shuffled their feet and looked a little shamefaced. But Arlek turned on Zek and snarled: “Betrayal? You speak to me of betrayal? The moment Lardis’s back’s turned you run off! Where to, Zekintha? Your own world, even though you’ve said there’s no way back there? To find yourself a champion, maybe—this man, perhaps? Or to give yourself to the Wamphyri and so become a power in the world? I would give you to them, aye—but only in trade for the safety of the Travellers—not for my own glory!”

  “Glory!” Zek scoffed. “Infamy, more like!”

  “Why, you—!” He was lost for words.

  Jazz had meanwhile been stripped of his packs, his weapons, but not of his pride. Strangely, now that he was down to his combat suit he felt safer; he knew he wouldn’t be shot for fear of the havoc he might wreak with his awesome weapons. At least he could stand man to man now. Even if he couldn’t understand all of Arlek’s words—and even though many that he could understand rang true—still he didn’t like Arlek’s tone of voice when he spoke to Zek like that. He caught the Gypsy’s shoulder, spun him round face to face. “You’re good at making loud noises at women,” he said.

  Arlek looked at Jazz’s hand bunching his jacket and his eyes opened wide. “You’ve a lot to learn, ‘free man,’” he hissed—and he lashed out at Jazz’s face with his clenched fist. His reaction had been telegraphed; Jazz ducked his blow easily; it was like fighting with a clumsy, untrained schoolboy. No one in Arlek’s world had ever heard of unarmed combat, judo, karate. Jazz struck him with two near simultaneous blows and stretched him out. And for his troubles he in turn was stretched out! From the side, one of the Gypsies had smacked him on the side of the head with the butt of his own gun.

  Passing out, he heard Zek cry: “Don’t kill him! Don’t harm him in any way! He may be the one answer to all your
troubles, the only man who can bring you peace!” Then for a moment he felt her cool, slender fingers on his burning face, and after that …

  … there was only the cold, creeping darkness …

  Andrei Roborov and Nikolai Rublev were lesser KGB lights. Both of them had been seconded to Chingiz Khuv at the Perchorsk Projekt—known as a punishment posting—for over-zealousness in their work; namely, Western journalists had snapped them beating-up on a pair of black-market Muscovites. The “criminals” in the case had been an aged man-and-wife team, selling farm produce from their garden in the suburbs. In short, Roborov and Rublev were thugs. And on this occasion they were thugs in serious trouble.

  Khuv had sent them to “talk” to Kazimir Kirescu; it was to be their last opportunity to interrogate the old man before he went on a course of truth-drugs. It would be best if he could be persuaded to volunteer the required information (on Western and Romanian links) for the drugs weren’t too good for a man’s heart. The older the man, the worse their effect. Khuv had wanted information before Kirescu died, for afterwards it would be too late. This might seem perfectly obvious, but to members of the Soviet E-Branch things were rarely as obvious as they seemed. In the old days when a person died without releasing his information, then they would have called in the necromancer Boris Dragosani, but Dragosani was no more. As it happened, neither was Kazimir Kirescu.

  Approaching the old man’s cell to see how his men were making out, Khuv was in time to discover the two just making their exit. Both wore the clear plastic capes or ponchos of the professional torturer, but Rublev’s cape was spattered with blood. Too much blood. His rubber gloves, too, where he stripped them from shaking hands. His face was deathly white, which Khuv knew was sometimes the reaction with this sort of man when he’d done a job too well, or enjoyed it too much. Or when he feared the consequences of a gross error.

  As the two turned from locking the door, Khuv met them face to face. His eyes narrowed as they took in Rublev’s shaken condition, and the condition of his protective clothing. “Nikolai,” he said. “Nikolai!”

  “Comrade Major,” the other blurted, his fat lower lip beginning to tremble. “I—”

  Khuv shoved him aside. “Open that door,” he snapped at Roborov. “Have you sent for help?”

  Roborov backed off a pace, shook his long, angular head. “Too late for that, Comrade Major.” He turned and opened up the door anyway. Khuv stepped inside the cell, took a long, hard look, came out again. His dark eyes blazed their fury. He grabbed the two by the fronts of their smocks, shook them unresistingly.

  “Stupid, stupid—!” he gasped his rage at them. “That was nothing less than butchery!”

  Andrei Roborov was so thin as to be almost skeletal. His cadaverous face was always pale, but never more so than now. There was no fat on him to shake, and so he simply rocked to and fro under Khuv’s assault, rapidly blinking his large green expressionless eyes, and opening and closing his mouth. When Khuv had first met him he’d thought: this man has the eyes of a fish—probably its soul, too!

  Nikolai Rublev on the other hand was very much overweight. His features were pink and almost babylike, and even the mildest reproof could bring him to the point of tears. On the other hand his fists were huge and hard as iron, and Khuv knew that his tears were usually tears of suppressed fury or rage. His rages, when he threw them, were quite spectacular; but he had more sense than to rage at a superior officer. Especially one like Chingiz Khuv.

  Finally Khuv let go of them, turned abruptly away and clenched his fists. Over his shoulder, without looking at them, he said: “Fetch a trolley. Take him to the mortuary … no! Take him to your own quarters. And make sure he’s covered up on the way. He can wait there for disposal. But whatever you do, don’t let anyone see him like … like that! Especially not Viktor Luchov! Do you understand?”

  “Oh, yes, Comrade Major Khuv!” Rublev gasped. It seemed he was off the hook.

  Still Khuv looked the other way. “Then both of you will prepare and sign the usual accidental death reports and get them in to me. And you’ll make sure they’re corroborative in every detail.”

  “Yes, Comrade, of course,” the two answered as one man.

  “Well, then—move!” Khuv shouted.

  They collided with each other, then made off down the corridor. Khuv let them go so far before calling after them: “You two!” They skidded to a halt. “Nikolai, for God’s sake get out of that cape!” Khuv hissed. “And neither one of you is to go near the girl, Kirsecu’s daughter. Do you hear me? I’ll personally skin whichever one of you so much as thinks about her! Now get out of my sight!”

  They disappeared in short order.

  Khuv was still standing there, trembling with fury, when Vasily Agursky came hurrying from the direction of the laboratories. He saw Khuv and sidled toward him. “I was told you’d be seeing to the prisoners,” he said

  Khuv nodded. “Seeing to them, yes,” he answered. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve just been to see Direktor Luchov. He has returned me to full duty. I’m on my way to see the creature—my first visit in a week! If you would care to accompany me, Major Khuv?”

  Right now that was the last thing Khuv would “care” to do. He glanced at his watch. “As it happens I’m headed that way,” he said. Anything to get Agursky away from here before Roborov and Rublev returned with their surgical trolley.

  “Good!” Agursky beamed. “If we can walk together, perhaps I can ask for your help in a certain matter. In the strictest confidence, you may be able to make a significant contribution to my—to our—understanding of that creature from beyond the Gate.”

  Khuv glanced at the strange little scientist out of the corner of his eye. There seemed something different about him; it was hard to put a finger on it, but some change had occurred in him. “I can make a contribution?” Khuv raised an eyebrow. “In connection with the creature? Vasily—do you mind if I call you Vasily?—I’m here to protect the Prokjekt from, shall we say, outside interference? As a policeman, a spycatcher, and investigator—as any and all of these things I already make my contribution. As for any other aspect of work at the Projekt: I have no control over the staff as such, no ‘official’ knowledge of any facet of the scientific work that goes on here. I control my own handful of men, yes, and I protect the specialists from Moscow and Kiev; but outside of these routine duties it is difficult to see how I can be of any assistance to you in your work.”

  Agursky was not put off; on the contrary, his voice was suddenly eager. “Comrade, there’s a certain experiment I would like to try. Now, any theoretical work I perform with the creature is my concern entirely, of course—but there’s something I need which is quite beyond everyday requirements.”

  Again Khuv glanced at him, glanced down on him, because beside the tall KGB Major, Agursky seemed almost a dwarf. His bald pate coming through its crown of dirty-grey fluff made him seem very gnome-like. But his red-rimmed eyes, made huge by his spectacles, put him in a much less comical perspective. He was like some strange, devious bottle-imp given the guise of a man.

  Devious!—that was the word Khuv had searched for to describe the change in Agursky. There was now something sly about the little man, something furtive.

  Khuv put his mental meanderings aside, uttered a none too patient sigh. He had never much cared for the little scientist, and now cared for him even less. “Vasily,” he said, “has the Projekt no procurement officer? Is there no quartermaster? A great deal may hinge upon our understanding of that beast. I’m sure that whatever you require for your work can be obtained through the proper channels. Indeed, I would say you have an absolute priority. All you have to do is—”

  “The proper channels,” Agursky cut in, nodding. “Exactly, exactly! But that is just precisely the problem, Comrade Major, The channels are perhaps too proper …”

  Khuv was taken aback. “Your requirement is improper? Unusual, do you mean? Then why on earth don’t you ask Direktor L
uchov about it? You’ve just been to see him, haven’t you? I should think Viktor Luchov can lay his hands on just about any—”

  “No!” Agursky caught his elbow and drew Khuv to a halt. “That is exactly my problem. He would not—definitely not—sanction this requirement.

  Khuv stared at him. There were beads of sweat on the man’s upper lip. His eyes, unblinking, burned on Khuv through the thick lenses of his spectacles. And the KGB Major thought: a requirement Luchov wouldn’t sanction? He noticed that Agursky’s hand was trembling where it gripped his elbow. It was suddenly very easy to jump to the wrong conclusion. Khuv broke abruptly away from the other, brushed at the sleeve of his jacket, drily said:

  “But I thought you were off the bottle, Vasily? The break was a little too sudden for you, was it? And now your supplies have run out and you require a re-stock,” he nodded his mock-understanding. “I should have thought that the soldiers could easily fill your needs from the barracks at Ukhta. Or perhaps it’s more urgent than that, eh?”

  “Major,” said Agursky, his expression unchanging, “the last thing I need is alcohol. In any case, I assume that you are joking, for I’ve already made it clear that this has to do with the creature. Indeed, it has to do with fathoming the very nature of the creature. Now I repeat: the Projekt cannot legitimately fill my requirement, and certainly Luchov would never sanction it. But you are an officer of the KGB. You have contacts with the local police, authority over them. You handle traitors and criminals. In short you are in a position—the ideal position—to assist me. And if my theory works out, you would have the satisfaction of knowing that you were in part responsible for the breakthrough.”

  Khuv’s eyes narrowed. The little man was wily, full of surprises, not his usual self at all. “Just what is this ‘theory’ of yours, Vasily? And you’d better tell me about your ‘requirement,’ too.”