The Touch

by Brian Lumley

  Sitting down again, Scott stared at her across his desk. Who are you? he thought, almost without realizing that he was reaching out to her with his mind. But then, coming up against a blank wall, out loud he said, “Or perhaps I should ask what are you? The things you say and do, you’re like no one I ever knew before.”

  “Thank you,” she said, simply.

  “What?” Scott was completely thrown. “You’re thanking me? But why? For what?”

  “I think you admire me.” Shania smiled, which he couldn’t remember her doing before. “And you find me attractive. That’s a great compliment, because I really have tried.”

  “You mean to say other men don’t find you attractive?” He could hardly believe it. “And what do you mean, you’ve tried?”

  “I don’t know any other . . . men,” she answered. “But yes, I’ve really tried . . .” She gave a shrug, and as quickly as that brushed it aside. “We can talk about it later.”

  “You’re changing the subject,” he said.

  Shania shook her head. “No, you are. We were talking about certain skills, or powers. And—”

  “—And before that about how I’ve changed,” Scott cut in. “But now that I’ve acknowledged that, isn’t it time you told me about yourself, or at least something of what’s going on here?”

  “Perhaps it is time,” she answered cautiously. “The reason I haven’t been too forthcoming is simple: until I was sure that you could accept such things I didn’t want to burden your mind. For four years I’ve studied your science, your religions, read your books, and watched your films. Your prisons hold many criminals, and your asylums—even your streets—are filled with disturbed minds. Physically you are strong, but mentally . . . ?”

  Scott’s frown deepened. “Our science, religions, books, and films? Now listen, I’ve thought of you as a foreigner since the first time I really saw you . . . please forgive me if that makes me sound xenophobic. But whoever you are, whatever your origin, what gives you the right to question my mental balance? No, I’m not going to commit suicide; I’ve never once considered it! And whatever this is all about, I’m certainly not going to go crazy over it!”

  “Oh, Scott!” she said then. “I’m so sorry if I’ve somehow wronged you, but please let me explain. You see, even if I were to spend another four years here, or ten if we were that fortunate, still certain concepts—human mores, beliefs, emotions, cruelties—would fall beyond my understanding. Remember, too, that while I have only known you at a distance, for a few short months, almost all of that time you’ve been stretched to the breaking point. I simply didn’t dare overburden you.”

  Shania’s shields were still up, and Scott was beginning to understand why. He had suddenly realized that she wasn’t speaking as someone from any specific foreign country but as someone who was foreign to humanity. Speaking in fact as an alien!

  She read him, hesitated, then nodded, Yes, in his mind.

  Scott believed in telepathy—he could scarcely do otherwise, not any longer—but aliens? Well maybe, and then again maybe not. And narrowing his eyes, he said, “Can you show me?”

  “Show you what?”

  “Something, anything.” He could only shrug. “These powers that you say you have?”

  “You want more proof? Other than what you’ve already seen and experienced? You don’t believe me?”

  “Yes—no—I mean, I want to—but I want proof anyway.”

  Shania shook her head, seemed disappointed in him. “You’ll have more than enough later.”

  “When, later?” Scott was eager for proof, knowledge, right now, even though he already more than half believed her.

  “Later tonight,” she said. “When I’ve gone.”

  “You’re going?” Scott’s voice showed his dismay. He didn’t want to know that. He wanted to know everything but that!

  “I must,” Shania insisted. “Two minds like ours, together? We’re like a beacon! Those people—the ones who ‘rescued’ you from the police—they are bound to know. And so might others.”

  “Others?” He was beginning to feel like a small child, the way he seemed to be always repeating her.

  Shania’s face now wore a very serious expression. Standing up, she walked around Scott’s desk to stand beside him where he remained seated, and said, “Scott, I shall say a name. On hearing it things may begin to fall into place. Now is not the time for action, however, and I know you for an impulsive man. Which is why once again I’ll ask you to remain calm, to think coldly, without anger—”

  “—Pain or passion,” Scott nodded. “Go on then, speak this name.” But he believed he already knew it. And he was right.

  Simon Salcombe, she said, in his head. And then, out loud: “But he is only one, and there are others.”

  Scott growled low in his throat, came to his feet, and took hold of her shoulders. Shania didn’t resist him. And staring at her, holding her close, he wondered how much else she knew and, maddeningly, what it was that she knew about!

  At the same time, however, he knew this wasn’t the way; he was angry—if not with Shania—and he wasn’t thinking coldly, dispassionately. But whatever she knew and whatever she wanted with him, he couldn’t force it from her. She would tell him in her own time. And that was probably for his own good.

  He released her, moved past her, began pacing the floor of his study to and fro.

  But no use to pretend he hadn’t been affected. At the back of his neck the short hairs stood erect; his skin tingled as if from the effect of a mild electrical current, and his heart was pounding. Also, like an image printed on his mind’s eye, he was seeing again that blurred picture of Simon Salcombe: his spider hand grasping Kelly’s left wrist!

  Abruptly he turned to Shania. “He killed her, didn’t he?”

  “I believe so.” She nodded. “In fact, I’m certain. But try to understand: as much as you loved her, Kelly was only one and Salcombe has killed . . . oh, a great many. Why, you couldn’t even count them! And, Scott, even if you knew where Salcombe was you couldn’t accuse or even approach him. He is that dangerous, and he’s not alone.”

  Scott nodded, tried not to scowl but couldn’t help it, and said, “In many ways he’s like you, isn’t he?”

  “In certain ways, yes.” Shania wouldn’t lie about it. “But in other ways, the ways that count, he and I are poles apart. I detest him! In fact, no one is quite like the creature you call Simon Salcombe, except perhaps—”

  “Those others you mentioned?”

  “Yes.” Shania looked at her watch, made a small adjustment, and hurriedly said, “We’ll talk again, and very soon, but right now I have to go.”

  “Not yet!” Scott snapped, turning his angry face away from her and beginning to pace the floor again. “Tell me about these others, Salcombe’s friends. How many are they in total, and him included?”

  She made no immediate reply. Instead Scott heard the pop! of what sounded like a small implosion, also the sound of loose papers fluttering on his desk, and spun on his heel. Shania was no longer there. But before leaving she had answered his question. And:

  Three! Her answer came home to him, out of the telepathic aether. And now he knew how she had got in here—or he didn’t. Which worked out at precisely the same thing . . .

  So much for a good night’s sleep.

  Scott cleared off the top of his desk and opened an atlas. Searching the index, he found no mention of a Porto Zoro or Ano Vassilikos, but he did find a Dafni: a village standing central in the Peloponnisos. It was Greek, yes, but miles from the sea, and having no view of the Mediterranean or any other large body of water, it couldn’t be Three’s location.

  Then Scott remembered Kelly’s collection of fold-out maps. Well into her twenties she had been a consumate sun-worshipper, a Grecophile and regular visitor to the Mediterranean islands. It might well be that she had visited Three’s location.

  In Kelly’s room, he located some two dozen faded, folding tourist information charts
and took them down to his study. And he was right: she had been to Three’s island, but it was almost dawn before he found it. It was Zante—short for Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea—and not far west of the Peloponissos at that.

  All well and good, but simply knowing where it was wasn’t going to get him there, and it definitely wouldn’t get him out again—not in the company of a wolf of the wild, muzzled and leashed or not! But as Shania had foreseen, things were definitely starting to come together . . .

  Scott was tired now; those long hours spent searching through small print had strained his eyes, and his muscles were aching from last night’s exercise, though not as much as he had expected. And that pleased him. Maybe he wasn’t as much out of shape as he’d thought. Still, an hour or two of sleep wouldn’t hurt, and it should certainly freshen and help focus his mind.

  In the bathroom, mindful of his bruises as he patted his face dry after laving his eyes with cold water, Scott checked himself out in the mirror—

  —And his jaw fell open. His face wasn’t bruised at all, his knuckles were no longer raw, and his rib cage wasn’t grazed! Indeed, he looked about as well as he could ever remember looking! But then when he thought about it, why not?

  It was Shania’s touch, one of her powers. Hadn’t she told him he would have his proof after she left? And if this wasn’t proof what was?

  Dawn, and Scott finally climbed into bed. Before sleeping he wondered how Three was doing high in the mountains of Zakynthos, avoiding the hunters. He also wondered how long it would be before he saw Shania again. And soft as a whisper, from not too far away:

  Not long, she said. Not long . . .

  14

  High in the Swiss Alps, Herr Gunter Ganzer drove in third gear and at the lowest, safest possible speed up a steeply zigzagging mountain road toward the hollow crest of Schloss Zonigen. While the crag itself, originally nameless, was no more than a trig point on modern maps, its local designation derived first: from its dramatic appearance, and second: from the name of the dubious founder of the complex it housed. “Schloss”—meaning castle—referred to its blackly glittering, ice-sheathed pinnacles and fantastically terraced outcrops, the illusory turrets and battlements of a troll’s keep; “Zonigen,” to an unqualified “Doktor” Emile Zonigen, the man who had opened up the facility almost thirty years ago. As to its function: it was (allegedly) a cryogenic repository, sanctuary, and experimental laboratory.

  Currently and also allegedly, or more properly ostensibly, Herr Ganzer was Schloss Zonigen’s “Direktor”; though for the last five years he would much prefer not to have been . . . in fact to have been almost anything and anywhere else in the world . . .

  On one of the road’s longer straighter stretches, with the snow chains on his BMW’s tires reassuringly biting into the ice-crusted surface, Ganzer took the opportunity to look out of his window at a familiar, once-friendly scene. To his right and far below—some two miles distant as viewed across the metal crash barrier—a picture-postcard village lay snug in its sheltering valley; the sun glinting on the roofs and windows of its mainly wooden, chalet-styled houses and taverns, with bluish-grey wood smoke spiralling up from a dozen chimneys. Then, as Ganzer made a slow, careful turn around a hairpin cut through a rocky spur, a different scene opened: that of a cable car descending toward what was once a ski lodge—but no longer.

  In season there were still skiers on the lower slopes, but not up here; not for five years now. Now the cable car conveyed only the facility’s trustees, its shift-working supervisors and foremen, or at least those of them who were allowed the freedom of time spent away from their work; in which respect Ganzer was one of the most fortunate. Competent neither as a scientist nor an engineer—nor yet fit enough for hard labour, but accepted by outsiders as the complex’s true manager—he could come and go more or less as he pleased . . . more or less.

  However, like every other worker at Schloss Zonigen, when Ganzer’s presence was required he had to make himself available as quickly as possible; and just exactly like the others, whatever work he was given in addition to his duties as “Direktor,” it must always be performed to the best of his limited talents, or else incur the awful wrath of his masters. And Ganzer’s masters being what they were . . . the very thought of that made him shudder. He had erred in this respect only once, a minor detail at that, and was still paying for it. It was the reason he was incapable of hard labour, the reason he limped . . .

  He thought back on Their coming:

  Five years ago, yes. And Schloss Zonigen had been in a bad way, tottering on the edge of a financial black hole. Inflation was to blame, that and the fact that people had stopped believing in frozen immortality. Twenty years ago when the rich died, some of them came here, bringing some of their money with them. Wills had been made, endowments, grants, and donations. But the descendants of those in suspension—their sons and daughters, agents, executors, solicitors, creditors—their main concern was only for the now of it; they had no interest in their father’s, mother’s, client’s, or debtor’s possible future resurrection, not after he, she, or they had been dead awhile. Their own more immediate futures took precedence. And ever the threat of investigations, sequestrations, insolvency; mounting costs and backed-up bills; and—along with inflation and a lack of new, rich, and recently dead clients—always the actual, available funds dwindling away to nothing.

  Add to that a succession of unscrupulous governors of the complex (not excluding Ganzer himself) since Herr Doktor Emile Zonigen’s disappearance in the mid-1970s when he had absconded with a six-million-franc donation from a future “sleeper,” and it was easy to see how the advent of the Three with their apparently inexhaustible funds had seemed like a godsend.

  The Three.

  They had names on paper, used other names when they spoke to each other, and accepted only “sir” or “mistress” in conversation with their so-called employees, in fact their slaves, when they issued orders, offered threats, or carried them out. Only three of them, yes . . . as cold, hard, and terrifying as an entire army of merciless automatons.

  But it hadn’t always been this way.

  At first they had appeared fascinated by Schloss Zonigen’s conceit; they had seemed to accept the feasibility of cryogenic suspension; they wished to carry out studies and experiments of their own in an environment that almost perfectly suited their needs. They would pay off all debts and bills, apply themselves to pressing, legal obligations, install machinery and equipment necessary to their endeavors, and continue to employ and even augment staff numbers. As for the monies Herr Ganzer was in the habit of “allowing” himself by way of a salary—by no means a pittance—they would double it; double every employee’s wages, in fact, in return (they said) for their loyalty. In effect and to put it in a nutshell, they would simply buy Schloss Zonigen outright. And they had.

  But right from the beginning there had been something very strange about them. In fact, everything about them had been very strange. Physical descriptions? At every early meeting, as they had worked things out—the nitty-gritty of the purchase of the facility—Ganzer had noticed . . . discrepancies. The female, or She, apparently had a “thing” about her appearance: she enjoyed changing it, frequently. Her shape, very hard and angular for a woman, rarely seemed the same from meeting to meeting. Sexually unappealing in general, she would be flat-chested one day, full-bosomed the next. Also, the colour of her hair, lip gloss, even her eyes! Contact lenses, of course. The only thing that hadn’t changed (which Ganzer wouldn’t have expected to change) was her height; well over six feet tall, she could hardly compress herself . . . now could she? But on the other hand he hadn’t thought she would want to. She seemed to enjoy standing aloof and looking down on people. And thin almost to the point of emaciation, still he’d sensed a nameless but overpowering strength in her.

  As for the men, Simon Salcombe and Guyler Schweitzer: they were much the same. Tall, awkward in their movements one minute and as flowing as mercury the next;
mercurial in general. Ganzer’s first opinion had been that they were all three suffering from a rare genetic disorder, perhaps gigantism; especially the men, who were at least six feet seven, and possibly an inch or two taller than that! And there was that about their looks that also hinted of genetic problems; it had seemed likely they were related, from some obscure isolated region where inbreeding had damaged their genes. In which respect their interest in Schloss Zonigen might lie on an associated plane: they could be searching for some kind of remedy, if not for themselves perhaps for others of their kind, their clan or community.

  And at first, despite that Ganzer sometimes felt repelled by their strangeness, still he’d felt genuinely sorry for them because of it. He had actually pitied them, yes.

  But not for long, for the changes had come fast . . .

  . . . And so had Ganzer come fast—to his destination. With his recollections fading as his car rode up onto Schloss Zonigen’s plateau, he found his usual parking spot and switched off his motor. He was here once again; he had been called here once again, to this now nightmarish place.

  Well, it had been nightmarish before—with its many dead, gradually crystallizing time-passengers, whose paid for, prayed for reincarnations weren’t ever going to come—but never more so than now. And reluctantly leaving his car, with a nod to the parka-clad attendant valet who was approaching across the high, flat plateau of the walled esplanade, wheeling his trolley containing an insulated car jacket, Ganzer paused for a moment and stared at the ugly black bulk of Schloss Zonigen.

  And indeed it looked like a castle, with its ice-sheathed, turret-like spires soaring on high, and above its great doors a facade of fractured rock like tottering merlons and embrasures, and behind the doors and guarded wicket the honeycombed complex itself: a cavern labyrinth that, when the ice withdrew twenty thousand years ago, snared the tail of a glacier, swallowed it, and kept its bones frozen still—and a great many other bones and indeed entire carcasses within it.