The Touch

by Brian Lumley

  “Well then,” said Scott. “But surely in his case we should make allowances. Many great men have their eccentricities and I entirely understand. Indeed, I thank you for this item of valuable information, and you may consider my lips sealed.”

  “Good!” said Pastor Patterson. “Good night then. I wish you a safe journey and look forward to speaking to your agents.”

  “Again my thanks, and good-bye,” said Scott.

  And holding the telephone to his ear a moment longer, finally Scott had heard the pastor mumble something unintelligible, and then the click! when the handset slipped into its cradle to break the connection—in fact a double click, and very hollow-sounding. Odd, that. There must be a fault on the line: static, probably. Well, that happened occasionally.

  So then, Kelly and Bill Comber had been right: the “altruistic” Mr. Salcombe’s visit to St. Jude’s had been a recruiting exercise. He had definitely albeit covertly—by reason of his alleged aversion to public appearances and the measures he took to protect his comings, goings, and knowledge of his whereabouts at any given time—he had indeed been seeking to attract rich new clients.

  And Scott thought:

  Murderers, of necessity, must needs be a cagey lot; especially when they’re weird, alien bastards like Simon Salcombe!

  And he also thought:

  Schloss Zonigen, hmmm!

  But he could find no mention of such a place in the index to his Great World Atlas . . .

  Now it was the evening of the third day, and it found Scott St. John sitting in his study frowning at a sun-bronzed girl on the glossy cover of a package-holiday folder, lying on his desk. In the folder: some tourist information, one hundred pounds’ worth of drachmas, and an airline ticket to Zante. He had heard Three in his dreams but had only contacted him once, and had been met with a barrage of “barked” telepathic queries about when he was going to come for him. And now the date was set: tomorrow.

  Well at least he would go to him, see what he could do for him, but as for getting him out of there: how does one smuggle a “wolf of the wild” off a Greek island? And yet in the back of his mind Scott felt certain that there was a way . . . if only he could remember it. But that—like his recently discovered telepathic abilities—was another mystery that he couldn’t as yet fathom: the feeling that he should know things, that he’d somehow been enabled, gifted.

  But gifted by a golden splinter in a dream? And Three, too?

  As best he could, Scott shrugged it off; in his mind, he’d turned these things over so often now that he’d reached a stage where he even avoided thinking about them. They would just have to work themselves out, revealing themselves (or perhaps returning to mind, as the case might be) in their own sweet time.

  He had checked the weather, the temperature in the Ionian Islands. Hovering in the mid-twenties centigrade, it was hot by anyone’s standards. Scott could very nearly “sense” Three’s tongue lolling and wondered how he was coping with it. He would doubtless find out tomorrow. And he also wondered if he could hire a boat to take them to the mainland, the Peloponnisos—and then what? Lay claim to the animal, license him, and put him in quarantine? What, for six months?

  Something inside said: work it out when you get there. And something else said: don’t worry about it, because it will work itself out. But he worried anyway . . .

  A velvety dusk had settled in, and a milky ground mist had come drifting from a stream in a nearby copse to lap Scott’s garden. Daydreaming, and drowsy, his eyes not quite focussed where they stared moodily, vacantly at the picture of the sun-bronzed girl, suddenly he became aware of mental presences. And moments later Shania and Three got through to him almost at the same time.

  Scott, said Three first, and Scott gave a massive start in his chair. Scott, do you hear me?

  “I hear you loud and clear, yes,” he answered. “You startled me. But you also remembered my name.”

  Listen, Three growled. If you are coming for me it must be soon. I mean really soon! They have started to lay traps for me with poisoned meat. Fortunately my nose is good. Not only can I sense directions, the outside world, yourself and Two—

  “Shania,” said Scott.

  —Yes, Shania, the joining one—but I also know foul meat when I smell it! I’ve taken to hiding near Zek’s house where my father’s scent confuses the trackers.

  “Trackers?”

  Tame dogs on leashes that the hunters use to sniff me out. But Zek protects my father—who is “legitimate”—and so protects me. I stay in a cave near the shore, where sea spray blows my scent away. But all the local chicken coops are well guarded now, the rabbits are wise to me, and I can’t stay here forever. Zek knows I’m here; I believe my father told her. She sometimes puts out meat. And so I survive, but poorly.

  “I’m coming for you tomorrow,” said Scott. “At noon, or an hour or so past noon, when the sun is still high, I shall be at Zek’s place. Sooner if I can manage it. There may be difficulties, but I will be there—”

  There came a sudden small disturbance of air and a flutter of loose papers on Scott’s desk, and:

  “Good!” said Three and Shania together, the latter’s voice coming from directly behind Scott, making him jump again before turning around in his swivel chair. And there she stood: Shania Two.

  And Three said, One thing before I go. You are Scott, she is Shania, and I am Wolf as my father before me. We are One and Two and Three, but we are more than numbers. I understand names but have trouble with numbers. Is it well that I am Wolf?

  “Yes, it’s well,” said Scott and Shania together. At which Wolf’s thoughts dwindled to nothing and he was gone.

  But Shania was still there.

  “You healed well,” she said.

  “I know, and I still don’t believe it.”

  Her face fell. “You don’t?”

  “It’s just an expression. Of course I believe it. I mean, how can I fail to believe it? Here you are just stepped out of nowhere, and I’ve been having a telepathic conversation with a dog—or rather a wolf of the wild—and so yes, I believe. In just about anything you want me to believe in!”

  And now that smile of hers, so warm he could feel it. But it quickly faded as she said, “Scott, it was important that you believe: in me and in Wolf, but especially in yourself. That is why I said ‘good’ when you told him you would come for him. The fact that you accept his plight, that you are his One, and that you’ve taken steps to rescue him—”

  “Which may prove difficult and even impossible,” Scott cut in, coming to his feet.

  “—was the final step that you needed to take,” she continued. “I’ve been waiting for you to take that very important step. As for the problems you foresee, the difficulties: there may be some, but I do not accept that it’s impossible.”

  “Oh, really?” he said. “But you’re not going to Zante.”

  “Zante?”

  “Zakynthos, a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. That’s where Three—where ‘Wolf’—is. You didn’t know that?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “His general direction, yes. His ‘voice,’ on those occasions when he contacted you: I also heard that. Also his howl of sudden awareness when he was stricken—”

  “Stricken?” Scott frowned.

  “When he was enabled.” She also frowned, looking for a way to best express herself. “When whatever it was that changed you changed him; when he sensed there was a One and began to search for you, however gropingly. That was why I assisted him—why I became the joining one—because I sensed that we were Three.”

  “Whoah!” said Scott, making a hand signal to tell her that most of what she’d just said had flown right over his head.

  “I know,” she said, reaching to take his hand, which made him shiver a very little. “It’s difficult, isn’t it? But, Scott, you may believe it’s just as difficult and even more so for me. But getting back to Wolf: you were his magnet no less than you were mine. In fact, you are more a magnet to him
, for you’re his man, his One.”

  “And the three of us together?” said Scott. “What the hell are we together?”

  “We’re a unit,” said Shania. “And that’s something I understand, for in my world there were many such units of three. All of us were units of three. But none of them had a wolf. No, for in my world there were no wolves. And now there is no world.”

  Suddenly she was sad, so sad. Scott looked at her and saw a tear forming in the corner of her eye. “You’re crying.”

  “I try too hard,” she said as he took her by the shoulders. “Your women cry.”

  For the moment, as he took a handkerchief from his pocket, her words made no real impact on him. “I’ll be careful not to ruin your makeup,” he told her, wiping away the small trickle. But then he paused and looked again, as she said:

  “There is no makeup.”

  And finally he noticed the differences. She was the same woman with the same voice; her straight yet shapely posture was the same; her eyes with those pinpoint stars that seemed to expand and then shrink like strange pulsars, they, too, were the same. Yet Scott knew that in some subtle way she was different than the last time he had seen her; like a twin but not quite, not entirely identical. And of course she was right: there was no makeup for him to ruin. Her skin tones were real, natural.

  But: “No.” Shania shook her head. “They’re only as natural as I can make them.”

  From the moment she had touched him his desk lamp had been playing up, dimming and brightening, almost switching off, only to flare back to life. Scott reached over and hit the button on the lamp’s base. The dusk in his garden, as deep and as haunted now as Shania’s hair, at once seemed to flow into the room.

  “There was no need for that,” she told him. “I can control it with a small effort. A very small effort, if you will let go of me. It was the contact.”

  “Ah!” Scott’s jaw fell partly open. “The contact? You mean when we touch? So then, the trouble I’ve been experiencing with the electrics is down to you?”

  “It was the contact, yes,” she said, releasing herself and switching the lamp back on. Now that they stood apart it burned fairly steadily again, with just the occasional flicker.

  “And my telephone?” he said. “Was that you, too?”

  Shania looked at the telephone and again frowned. Stepping forward a pace, she touched the phone. “No, that wasn’t me. It was someone else, someone who tampered with the instrument. Can we find anything strange, do you think?”

  She unscrewed the cover of the mouthpiece and held out the handset for Scott to look inside. Stuck to the cup’s inner wall he saw a dull metal disc about one-quarter of an inch thick and three-quarters of an inch in diameter, like a small battery. It was connected by a wire as thick as a hair to the phone’s diaphragm.

  Taking the phone from Shania, and glaring at it with angry narrowed eyes, Scott took a deep breath and growled, “Well, I’ll be . . . !” And yanking the tiny listening device from its seating, letting it fall to the floor and crushing it underfoot, he went on, “Damn! I’ve been bugged!”

  19

  Scott stared at the tiny fragments of intricate circuitry and crumpled foil casing on the floorboards at his feet. “Bugged!” he said again. “But by whom?”

  “Not by the Three,” said Shania, with a quick shake of her head. “They’re not aware of you, or perhaps only faintly aware, on the outermost rim of their sensory periphery. As your powers grow, however—and if you fail to keep them shielded—they’ll become far more aware, as they would be of any psychically endowed person. One thing is sure: if they knew of your potential, then by now you would be dead.”

  Staring at her, Scott said, “Well thanks a lot for that!”

  “But it’s the truth,” she said, and shrugged in a matter-of-fact but by no means casual manner. “No, this could only be your people, E-Branch, the ones who picked you up.”

  “E-Branch? Is that what they’re called? You’re sure?”

  “Yes,” she said. “For when they were looking at you I was looking at them. Because their minds were open and receptive to your thoughts, they were also open to me. It is much easier for a telepath to read a telepath than a nontelepath. I even tried to send them a message: a warning to keep away and avoid jeopardizing what we are doing.”

  Scott gave a derisory little snort, aimed more at himself than at her, and pulled at his ear. “You might want to tell me about that sometime,” he said. “I mean, about what we’re doing. Because apart from being a member of a unit, one of a very odd team, or rather Three’s One, and One of Three—for God’s sake!—I don’t know if I’m coming or going, on my head or my heels!”

  “You are naturally confused,” she told him.

  He gave another snort, let out his breath in a long sigh, and said, “Only slightly!” And followed it up with: “I’m sorry, Shania; I’m not usually so sarcastic. It’s just that I’m finding it very hard to put all this together.”

  “But I know that you are putting it together,” she argued. “You’ve accepted your telepathy, which is maturing in you. You have accepted your position as a member of our Three. You have decided to attempt Wolf’s rescue. And—perhaps less sensibly, and despite my warnings—you’ve begun delving in places where you shouldn’t go.”

  “I’ve what?” But Scott couldn’t help feeling guilty, and he probably looked it, too.

  “I can contact you at any time,” she reminded him. “I have done so during the last three days, if only to be sure you were keeping safe. I’ve ‘overheard’ you thinking about conversations with St. Jude’s Hospital. And much worse, I was just a few minutes too late to stop you talking about Simon Salcombe. We dare not bring ourselves, or yourself, to his attention! Not yet.”

  Scott scowled. “That man is a murderer and must be brought to justice!”

  “Yes,” she answered. “But how to do it? Through the authorities? I’m sure we’ll discover that in Switzerland, where he is domiciled, Mordri Two has already bought and otherwise suborned several so-called authorities. The Mordri Three, they pay their way, Scott, and your world is full of avarice.”

  “Mordri Two? That’s Salcombe?”

  “That’s his name in his Three. The others are Mordri One, female, who calls herself Frau Gerda Lessing; and Mordri Three, who has adopted the name Guyler Schweitzer after the land where they are based.”

  “Now it comes thick and fast,” said Scott, sighing. And as he began to feel the pressure of things: “Let’s go into my sitting room, take the weight off our feet, have a drink—a small one—er, you do drink, right?—and be comfortable. I really would like to think I’m absorbing at least some of this!”

  “Very well,” said Shania. “But first let’s check the rest of the house for—what, ‘bugs’ did you say? That term is new to me.”

  “Listening devices, yes,” said Scott. And on afterthought: “Also, there’s something missing, gone from this room. It can’t be anything hugely important, for then I’d know what it is; but whatever, it’s no longer here. So, do you reckon you can maybe help me with that one, too?”

  He could see that his request gave her pause, but after a moment she said, “Possibly . . . but first the bugs. Hold me.”

  Momentarily startled, he said, “Hold you?” Then: “Ah! You mean the touch, contact, yes?”

  She had already moved forward, facing him at close range. “Yes, by which we may sense any intrusive devices.”

  “We?”

  “As two, together,” she explained, “if we apply ourselves to the task, our powers may be doubled and possibly redoubled; even trebled, if Wolf were here. Especially with his nose. But even without him we should be able to discover such devices by their failure.”

  “Come again?”

  “Just do it!” She was getting impatient now. “Hold me!”

  Scott knew that Shania wasn’t a woman, at least not of the human variety. But she was so much like a woman—like essence of woman—that if he
didn’t know he wouldn’t give a damn! And as for holding her: he could feel her warmth from twelve inches away; he could smell that tantalizing scent, which was probably as “natural” as her skin tones were “natural,” but so what? And she really was trying very hard to be a woman. He’d known girls from time to time who hadn’t tried nearly this hard!

  “Scott,” she told him, moving closer still, “I am a woman, and if all works out I may remain a woman until all my time . . . until everything is done. Indeed, almost four million years ago when the Shing’t first came here, our blood flowed in the first of your women. My race brought your women about! Therefore hold me as a woman—or not, as you wish—but do hold me.”

  So he did. His arms went about her and her breasts pressed against him; her thighs were warm against his; she felt so real, so alive, so vital, that her clothes seemed mere wisps, flimsy wrappings around an astonishing gift, so that she might even be naked in his arms. It made Scott feel naked, too; made him wish they were! Shania’s breath and the almost hypnotic scent of her incredible body permeated his pores, went straight to his head, and caused his blood to pound. And as for her hair . . .

  “So then,” her voice was husky now, “you choose to hold me as a woman.” Whichever, his desk lamp was acting up again, more so than before. It caused a slow strobing effect where the dark between the light intervals was as sensual as smoky silk.

  Choose to hold you as a woman? Scott thought. Damn right I do! And he immediately felt guilty again, but this time because of Kelly.

  “And now concentrate,” she said. “Feel out the intrusions. Search for the strangeness, for anything unusual here.”