Simon stood staring with his mouth open. Philip didn’t move at all. His head rested against the altar, the backs of his heels on the floor. Between these two extremities his body was rigid as a plank. He seemed frozen in the posture he’d been standing in, his hand extended and the pistol now pointing up at the roof. His eyes were staring crazily at some point on the ceiling. His mouth was caught in an ugly snarl.
‘Don’t hurt him,’ the stranger said. ‘He’s alive, but he’s harmless now.’
Something in his voice made Stephen look at him, and he saw where Philip’s bullet had lodged. The stranger’s hand was clasped to his chest. A dark stain was spreading around it. Kirsten gasped when she saw it. He lowered his hand, and the stain spread rapidly – unnaturally so. The other three stared.
‘Please,’ the stranger said, ‘don’t concern yourselves. I’ve speeded up the heart a little. It will end all this sooner.’
He sounded almost relieved.
‘But you’ll die!’ Simon said.
The stranger smiled for the first time since they’d met him.
‘Yes,’ he said simply.
The blood covered his chest now. He was getting paler even as they watched. He gestured towards Philip.
‘The other two will take care of him,’ he said. ‘He’ll stay frozen until they release him.’
His blood started to drip. He looked down.
‘Sorry about messing up the floor,’ he said. ‘It will be all right later.’
No one replied to his crazy apology. They watched him in silence.
‘I want this,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be here anymore.’
There was a chair beside him. He sat on it heavily, weakening now. He looked at Stephen.
‘I owe you and this … this young lady an apology,’ he said. Turning to Kirsten, he smiled again.
‘Tell the other two that my report will tell the truth. Tell them that this is a token of my good will. And tell them that I’m sorry I deceived them – I did have a little power left.’
He slumped suddenly in the seat. There was no need to check for a pulse. He was obviously dead. And his smile, if anything, was wider.
32. Agents of Mercy
The prospect of helping the human wasn’t disgusting in itself, just … very odd. But it did involve one thing that most of our people would have found obnoxious – we had to communicate with what humans would call his ‘soul’, an intimacy most of our kind would have found unthinkable with a human. I can’t say that it sounded like an attractive idea at the time, the most I can say is that it didn’t sound as awful as it once would have.
In the back of my mind I did feel a certain distaste, maybe even fear. The whole thing smelled of danger and of the risk of contamination. If my friend felt any doubts he didn’t show them. As we began to search inside the human, it was my friend’s calmness that helped me to keep my mind focused on what we had to do.
I felt the spirit almost immediately. The feeling was nowhere near as bad as I’d expected. When all was said and done it was simply a wounded soul in need of help. I soon forgot everything except the job in hand.
The spirit was grieving, but not because of the damage done to its body. It grieved for the whole situation, and for the anguish being felt by the human who’d damaged it. At first, when it noticed our presence, it mistook us for some entities from the mythology of its species, something it called ‘angels’. These seemed to be benign imaginary creatures from some fantastic spirit world. The spirit seemed relieved when we assured it that we were not from the supernatural realm.
The abbot’s spirit recognised that our intentions were peaceful. We directed its energy towards healing itself. It was ignorant of the processes involved, but it responded to our guidance as best it could.
The body’s wound was bad, some of the vital organs had been critically damaged. But there was nothing that seemed impossible to repair. We taught the spirit how to slow the bloodflow and soothe the ruptured tissue. Its untrained efforts would be weak, but they’d concentrate the spirit’s attention on its home, which was the important thing. The crystals could repair the flesh, but if the spirit, in its ignorance, lost its grip on the body, there was little or nothing anyone else could do.
Communicating with the spirit took us marginally out of the world, into one of the twilight planes that fringe its borders. When we returned fully to our bodies time had passed. The big room was empty apart from ourselves and the wounded human. I hoped there’d been no fresh problems; we’d be busy with the healing for a while yet.
‘What do you reckon?’ my friend asked.
I shrugged.
‘It wasn’t as nasty as I expected,’ I said. ‘He’s a strange human. I saw no lust for blood in him.’
‘And his chances?’
I considered.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘I see no physical reason why we can’t heal him. But he has to hold on.’
There was the sound of gunshot from somewhere in the building. At the same time I felt a little ripple of force in the air.
‘Someone just used power,’ my friend said.
‘The Sug,’ I said. ‘I thought he had none left.’
‘So did I. It seems we thought wrong.’
My friend wanted fresh complications as little as I did. He looked at the closed door and sighed.
‘It was him all right,’ he said, ‘but … I trust him, much as it sticks in my craw to admit it. Whatever is going on, we’ll sort it out later. The work here can’t wait.’
He gave me one of his thin smiles.
‘A Sug that I trust and a human worth trying to save,’ he said. ‘Surprises never end here, do they?’
He opened the dying monk’s habit, exposing the bullet wound. Looking at it, I could almost understand the disgust humans roused in the Sug. What was one to make of a species that caused such damage so casually? They didn’t even do it for food, and they did it without having any real evidence that the body’s inhabitant had somewhere else to go.
‘One crystal on the chest,’ my friend said, ‘and one on the back. There’s no need for bandages – he won’t move.’
The bleeding had already stopped. He held out his hand.
‘Give me the stones,’ he said.
I took them out of my pocket and gave them to him.
‘Here goes nothing.’
33. Devils
Kirsten stared dumbly at the dead stranger on the floor. She seemed terribly calm.
‘The ones who attacked us had no blood,’ she said. ‘This one certainly does.’
She looked at Simon.
‘The patients,’ she said. ‘The crazy ones. Were any of them hurt when they were found? Were they bleeding?’
Simon had been looking in fascination at the frozen figure of Philip, who lay propped against the altar like an especially life-like dummy. At Kirsten’s question he turned.
‘What? No, none of them was injured – not physically anyway.’
Stephen didn’t like being in the chapel anymore. The two immobile bodies were too strange.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.
Simon nodded.
‘We’ll go to the kitchen,’ he said. ‘I’ll make some coffee or something.’
‘What about the other strangers? Shouldn’t we tell them what’s happened.’
‘They may already know. Let’s just leave them to their work.’
In the hallway, Simon thought of something. He stopped short.
‘You two go ahead,’ he said. ‘Put some water on to boil. I’d best reassure Thomas that he’s not going to be slaughtered. He’s locked himself in the television room.’
Kirsten was silent as they crossed the courtyard. She was too calm for Stephen’s liking. It was as though she’d had one shock too many. In the kitchen he found a big kettle, filled it and put it on the range.
‘Why are you interested in the blood?’ he asked Kirsten.
‘The ones with no blood seem to be the dangerous o
nes,’ she said. ‘The killers.’
‘You’re saying the big stranger was human?’
‘I’m saying nothing about the others, really. I was wondering about us.’
He stared at her.
‘You don’t still think we’re human, do you?’ Kirsten asked.
Stephen’s mouth opened to answer, but he could think of nothing to say. He didn’t feel inhuman – but then, how could he be sure how that would feel?
Simon came in, shaking his head.
‘It’s incredible!’ he said. ‘Amazing!’
‘What is?’
‘I went to the television room. The door was wide open. And there was young Thomas, lying on the table, no less, sound asleep. I tried to wake him, but I couldn’t.’
‘That sounds like more of the strangers’ work,’ Kirsten said. ‘I’m glad for Thomas, really – he was so frightened.’
‘But that’s not all. I went back to the chapel for a last look at Philip. I really quite like him like that, frozen. But the stranger, the dead one – he’s gone!’
‘Gone?’
‘Gone! And so is his blood! It’s as though he’d never been there at all!’
‘But he was dead!’ Kirsten said. ‘He can’t be gone! Has someone cleared up?’
Simon threw up his hands.
‘We’re not five minutes out of there,’ he said. ‘Besides, who is there to do it?’
Stephen was remembering the body in the field. It had been bloodless, and it had disappeared. Things still made no sense, but they were starting to fit into a pattern.
‘There’s still more,’ Simon said. ‘I thought I’d better check on the patients upstairs. But when I went up, guess what?’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Stephen said. ‘They’re either gone or asleep.’
‘Sleeping like babies, the lot of them. With big smiles on their faces – and that’s as odd as anything else, I can assure you.’
The kettle began to boil. Simon rubbed his hands and started fetching coffee-making things from various cupboards. Stephen suspected that he was starting to enjoy all this in some strange way. When he said as much to Simon, the monk thought before answering.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m enjoying the fact that it’s nearly over. And I’m quite sure it is. I’ve felt it ever since those strangers arrived. They seem to know exactly what’s going on. There’s an air off them I like. They’re …’
‘Confident?’ Stephen suggested.
‘More than that. They’re professional.’
‘But professional what?’ Stephen said. ‘That’s what I’d like to know.’
‘Fix-it men,’ Simon said. ‘That’s what they said.’
‘They’re not men, though, are they?’ Kirsten asked in a quiet voice.
Simon stopped what he was doing and looked at her.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think they are. But I’m no Philip – the fact that they’re strange to me doesn’t mean I automatically think they’re evil. These people don’t seem to mean us any harm – quite the reverse, in fact. One of them has died for us, although admittedly death doesn’t seem to mean much to them.’
‘But if they hadn’t come,’ Stephen said, ‘Philip wouldn’t have gone over the edge. Paul wouldn’t have been shot.’
Simon sighed.
‘I’ve known Philip,’ he said, ‘ever since he came to our gates. I’ve never felt able to trust him. He has a thing in him that I saw a lot of after my own war. It’s a mixture of guilt and self-pity, and it’s a dangerous thing. He felt guilty about his past, but he couldn’t take responsibility for it. It’s eaten away at his insides for ten years now. All of this did something to him, of course, but Philip was already well on the way to some kind of madness. I’ve noticed him getting stranger for a long time. I tried to tell Paul that he didn’t belong here, but Paul, being a good and a merciful man – a holy man, which I’m not – saw none of this. When this strangeness happened, I think Philip actually enjoyed it at first. He could be active and play with his guns like he always wanted to. He could try to forget the thing that was eating at him – the guilt.’
He frowned at them and shook his head, unable to explain himself fully.
‘Some people,’ he said, ‘can’t take responsibility for their own feelings. They need to find devils outside of themselves to blame their own guilt on. Of course there aren’t any devils, so they invent them.’
By now the kettle was steaming. Simon went back to his coffee-making.
‘You say those strangers drove Philip over the edge,’ he said. ‘But it wasn’t their fault that he was so close to the edge to begin with. As we’ve agreed, they aren’t human – how could they know how crazy humans are?’
‘And us?’ Kirsten’s voice was small and fearful. ‘What about us, Simon? Are we human?’
Again the old monk stopped and looked at her.
‘I doubt it very much,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. What’s so wonderful about being human?’
It was Kirsten’s turn to struggle for words. Simon took pity on her.
‘Humans can be wonderful creatures,’ he said. ‘But they rarely are – read your history books. For the most part we’re worse than Philip’s devils could ever be. We do evil to each other, evil to every species we encounter. Your … people, whatever they are, can’t be much worse. They may even be better. It wouldn’t be so very hard. Be careful, child. Naturally you’re upset. But don’t go looking for things to upset yourself further. I see nothing unnatural about either of you.’
‘But you’ve admitted that we’re not human!’
‘Inhuman and unnatural are not the same thing at all. You’re in the world, and there’s nothing unnatural in the world.’
Before Kirsten could respond, footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. The three of them stared at the door.
The driver came in. He still wore his hat, but his jacket was draped over his arm and he’d loosened his collar and tie. His shirt was stuck to his skin with sweat. He looked completely drained. He walked to the table and sank into a chair.
‘Do I smell coffee?’ he asked in a weak voice.
Simon quickly poured a cup. The driver took it gratefully and drank deeply.
‘Well?’ Simon asked.
‘He’ll live, I think. The recovery has started, and my friend is supervising it. But it took a lot of effort, and I’m worn out. It’s my second repair job today, remember.’
‘Thank you,’ Simon said. ‘Thank you very much.’
‘I’m glad we could help,’ the driver said. ‘After all, we’re partly responsible for what happened.’
They told him about the events in the chapel. The driver nodded.
‘I guessed it was something like that,’ he said. ‘I tidied up a bit, and I took the liberty of putting one of your people to sleep. I hope you don’t mind.’
Simon positively chuckled.
‘Mind?’ he said. ‘Not a bit.’
‘And is it our turn now?’ Kirsten asked.
The man’s pale eyes looked at her.
‘Not at all,’ he said. He sighed again. ‘I suppose I have some explaining to do.’
No one said anything to that. The driver looked directly at Simon, the eyes in his tired face weighing the old monk’s reaction to his words.
‘You’ll have gathered,’ he said, ‘that we’re not … not quite like you.’
‘No,’ Simon said. ‘You’re not human.’
There it was.
‘No. We’re here to do a certain job. Until it’s completed we can’t leave – for your species’s sake as well as our own. The job is almost done now, but there are a few loose ends – the creatures outside your walls, for instance.’
‘Do they share your powers?’ Simon asked.
‘No. They’re hunting things. They have no other purpose. But they’re out of their owners’s control. They’re very dangerous, and yet – your human languages can’t convey this very well – in some ways t
hey’re not even real, at least as you understand that word. Even to call them creatures is an exaggeration.’
‘They’re real enough to kill,’ Kirsten said. Her voice was still harsh.
‘Oh yes, they’re real enough for that. But then it doesn’t take very much reality to kill. Even shadows can kill, and in many ways that’s all they are – shadows. When we destroy them, we don’t even speak of ‘killing’ – we call it ‘unshading’.’
With a shock, Stephen recalled the old man he’d seen in the courtyard that night. ‘Unshade me,’ the old man had pleaded with someone or something. Was he, then, a hunting thing as well?
‘What about us?’ Kirsten asked indicating herself and Stephen. ‘Are we ‘real’?’
The driver looked at her and smiled.
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘You two are very real. Of course you are.’
‘And the people upstairs?’ Stephen asked.
‘You mean the ones you call ‘patients’,’ the driver said. ‘You’ll find this hard to accept, but there are no people upstairs. There never were. If you check them now you’ll find that they are, in your terms, dead. They ‘died’ peacefully in their sleep.’
Simon bristled. His voice suddenly became cold, menacing.
‘Are you telling me,’ he said, ‘that you’ve killed those poor unfortunate – what would you call them, non-people? Üntermensch?’
His voice sneered the last word with disgust. The driver was shaking his head.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘You misunderstand. It’s not a matter of opinion, I call them what they were. Certainly your ‘patients’ were biologically living. But they weren’t creatures. All living creatures have what you would call a soul – the entities upstairs had none.’
Out of Nowhere Page 13
