The Touch

by Brian Lumley

Blink! The man in the kaftan was still busily thieving.

  Blink! His spindly, long-fingered hand reached through the bars of the cage, in the act of releasing another heavy ingot.

  And indeed the intruder didn’t seem too concerned, for now there were fifteen or sixteen bars of gold on the floor outside the cage. But now, too, the circular steel door in the alcove was open and a uniformed male figure had entered the vault. Sidearm drawn, leaning forward in order to keep a low profile, the Lieutenant was mouthing something—an order, or perhaps a warning—but of course there was no audio on these stills.

  Blink! Up close to the cage and apparently astonished, the officer held his sidearm pointed loosely at the floor. The tall man in the cage seemed helpless, trapped.

  Blink! Despite the blurred nature of the picture, the Lieutenant’s face showed his emotion: no longer amazement but fury. Having reached through the bars, he had grabbed the intruder’s kaftan—but his sidearm was still pointed at the floor. It was quite obvious that he “knew” he was safe.

  Blink! He wasn’t safe!

  Arms outflung, the Lieutenant was frozen in midair, apparently flying backward with both feet inches off the floor; his sidearm lay where it had fallen close to his feet; the intruder was now outside the cage, with one scrawny hand extended toward the lieutenant, having pushed him out of the way.

  Blink! The tall man was draping his kaftan over the piled ingots, and at his feet the Lieutenant lay on his side, having coiled himself into an almost fetal ball. But his eyes bulged and his mouth gaped wide open in a silent scream.

  Blink! The intruder was gone, likewise the gold. The Lieutenant was no longer fetal but almost perfectly spherical, his fatigues exploding outward from the metamorphosis of his body, his shape! Three other guardsmen had entered the vault through the circular door in the arched alcove.

  Kellway hit the pause button and said, “Sir?”

  Trask’s mouth was dry but he husked, “Yes, what is it?”

  “There are some close-up pictures of the Lieutenant taken by the USMPs. They were taken just as they found him, lying on the floor there. Do you want to see them?”

  “Not if he was evaginated,” Trask answered. “I already know what that looks like.”

  “He wasn’t evaginated.” Kellway shook his head. “He was . . . something, but it wasn’t that.”

  Looking down on the wide-eyed man craning his neck to look back up at him, Trask said, “Okay, show them to me. Or at least one of them. I’m sure I’ve seen worse.”

  And in fact he had, but not a lot worse.

  In the coloured picture that Kellway now flashed onto the screen, at first it seemed that some sculptor had carved a mass of pink-, purple-, and blue-veined marble into an almost perfect sphere some twenty inches in diameter. But as the viewer’s eyes finally recognized what they were seeing, the reason the sphere wasn’t perfect but somewhat oblate became obvious . . . it was an effect of gravity working on a substance that wasn’t nearly as rigid as marble—a substance that was in fact flesh and blood and bone—the former Lieutenant.

  Trask managed to still a tic that had begun jerking in the corner of his mouth, and husked, “Show me another.”

  Kellway’s gulping was clearly audible, but he nevertheless obliged. Now Trask and the other agents glimpsed a picture that had been taken from the other side of . . . of this thing that had been a man; the side with the Lieutenant’s flattened face on it, his eyes staring out in frozen horror, mouth gaping and stilled tongue curled to one side. And alongside this impossibly fused, uniform globe of dead flesh, his fatigues and underclothes, all in disarray, torn or split down the seams as his body and limbs had convulsed in the transformation.

  Not evagination, no, but Trask would now be willing to bet it had been wrought by the same kind of force. And:

  “Turn the fucking thing off!” he rasped, turning away . . .

  28

  Outside Kellway’s room, as Ben Trask’s agents went off to their various stations to get on with their work while waiting on his instructions, he called three of his main men aside, taking the precog Ian Goodly, locator David Chung, and telepath Paul Garvey along the corridor with him to his office. Inside with the door closed, Trask seated himself behind his desk; Goodly and Garvey took chairs opposite, and Chung preferred to stand.

  After sitting there awhile thinking and stroking his chin, Trask said, “I’m pretty sure that by now you three—hell, and probably all the rest of the crew—must be thinking along much the same lines. Something here, in fact several things here, are just too much of a coincidence. Our man Kellway out there isn’t our only capable investigator; in our diverse ways we’re all of us detectives, psychic sleuths. Me, I’ve never relied solely on this lie-detecting thing of mine. While I like to think of that as a God-given talent, I also try to use my God-given brains.

  “Gentlemen, I don’t believe in coincidences. A single coincidence: you can call it synchronicity. Two coincidences: well, it’s just another one of those things—maybe. But in a while, when they start piling one on top of the other, what then? Can you guess what I’m talking about? I mean, do you know what I’m talking about?”

  Then, before anyone could answer, glancing sharply at Paul Garvey, Trask added, “No, not you, Paul. Because I know you can see right through me! But David, maybe?” He looked at Chung. “I have this feeling that there’s more on your mind than you spoke of in the Ops Room. I saw it written in your face. Am I right?”

  Chung nodded, and said, “On my mind? Oh, yes, and it’s been there for quite a while now, from the moment Scott St. John was brought in here; but until now I couldn’t really explain it . . . maybe not even now. I remember, I was walking past Harry’s Room that day when something stirred in my head. It was just . . . just a feeling, but an incredibly strange one. I mean, if the Necroscope himself had come out through that door into the corridor, I wouldn’t have been much surprised. No, of course I would have been surprised—I might even have fainted!—but it wouldn’t have been unexpected. It was a strong feeling. And then there’s what I experienced this afternoon.” Chung turned to the precog. “Ian, I can fully understand the concern you expressed earlier: the possibility that my locating skills were out of kilter, but they weren’t. And I agree it’s impossible for St. John to be in Zakynthos one minute and in a North London suburb the next. But unless he has an identical twin with an identical aura, he was! And Paul here backs me up on that. So . . . ?”

  “So,” said the precog, acknowledging Chung’s sincerity, or at least accepting that Chung himself believed what he had said to be the truth. “But of course you realize that there was only ever one human being who could do that sort of thing: move like that, at will, anywhere he wanted to go, and instantaneously?”

  Before Chung could answer, Trask came in with, “But that’s now become one hell-of-a-big ‘was,’ my friend!”

  “Very definitely a ‘was,’ ” said Chung, excitedly. “Or more properly a ‘no longer.’ For all four of us, and almost everyone else in E-Branch, we all saw the coxcomb man—the spiky-haired man in the kaftan, in those Fort Knox security stills—we all saw what he could do: how he moved in and out of that cage, how he came and went, appearing and disappearing like that. I mean, when I saw that, yet again I thought of Harry Keogh.”

  “Me, too,” said Trask, “and probably everybody else who saw it. But on afterthought, it wasn’t—couldn’t have been—the Möbius Continuum.”

  “How so?” said Goodly.

  “Because Harry had to physically fall, step, dive, or swim through his doors. I mean, he could conjure up doors, so-called Möbius doors! Invisible to us, still they were there. The point is that in order to do his fantastic thing Harry had to physically move himself through them; whereas that man or creature in Fort Knox, he couldn’t possibly pick up all those gold bars at one time and just walk through a door! The weight and awkwardness would be just too much for any ordinary man. No, but what he did, he draped his kaftan over that pil
e of precious metal—and blink!—”

  “He was no longer there,” said Goodly, nodding. “Something like the Möbius Continuum, then?”

  “It has to be,” said Paul Garvey. “And I’m thinking: using the Möbius Continuum, not only was Harry able to traverse four-dimensional space-time, but he could also cut across it. He had been to another world, with Zek Föener and Jazz Simmons, and he had fought the Wamphyri there! But that was only one world, and what if—”

  “What if there are others?” This was Trask speaking.

  “And not just parallel worlds,” said Chung. “I mean, there are billions of worlds out there!” He threw up an arm, indicating everything. “That . . . that person, coxcomb man: did he look human to anyone? Well, not to me! He was like some extraordinary version—some otherworldly version—of Fu Manchu. I got an attack of the creeps just looking at him, let alone what he did to that lieutenant!”

  “And then there’s that,” said Goodly. “The way they murder people.”

  “ ‘They,’ yes,” said Trask. “Three of them. Once again that number comes up: Simon Salcombe, Gerda Lessing, and this fellow at Fort Knox, this Guyler, er—?”

  “Schweitzer,” said Garvey, “who has borrowed his name from Switzerland, apparently. But as for how they kill . . .”

  “Almost instantaneous metamorphoses,” said Goodly, “making grotesque mutations of men, things that die because they simply can’t and wouldn’t want to live like that! Worse, they can vary the degree of change, of pain, of punishment, making it last as long as they want or killing in a matter of moments.”

  Trask nodded. “Kelly St. John,” he said, grimly. “She just wasted away, in a matter of days. That was Salcombe making sure he wouldn’t be connected to her death. But what about Stamper?”

  Garvey shrugged. “Perhaps he’d stalled on paying the price—in gold—for Salcombe’s ‘services’: the cure for his ailing son. But what I’m wondering now: if these people can change the shapes of others, how about themselves? Are they in fact shape-changers?”

  And Goodly reentered with: “They can cure as well as kill. They have this . . . yes, this weird ‘talent.’ They’ll use it for ‘good’ when it enables them to achieve their own ends, for evil when they’re thwarted.”

  “And then there’s this other thing I’ve been researching,” said Chung. “Well actually, all I had to do was check the obituaries and make a phone call, which I’d finished doing just a minute or two before today’s O-Group. But . . . do you remember the night we all came in here to watch—well, whatever it was—but let’s call it Harry’s passing? Yes, of course you do; we all do. For afterward we knew that the Necroscope Harry Keogh was dead, and that he had died on Starside in a vampire world. But it’s the timing that’s important.”

  “So then,” said Trask, nodding and staring intently at the locator. “I was right: you do know more than you’ve been saying. Not that you’ve been hiding it but simply haven’t found time to tell it. Now let me tell you something: it’s possible you and I have been working toward the same conclusion, the same end, and that we got there at approximately the same time. Okay, so I’ll take a shot at it . . . we’re talking about the time of the Necroscope’s death, right? Well, and now you know what I was talking about when I was going on about coincidences and synchronicity, et cetera. But here’s my finding: that it was only after Harry Keogh died—in fact immediately after he died—that St. John suddenly began to develop his own parapsychological skills. Is that what you were going to say?”

  Chung nodded. “That’s part of it, yes. You’re right as far as you go, sir, but you don’t go far enough.”

  “Oh?” said Trask. “So what else?”

  “Well you see,” said Chung, “it wasn’t just Harry who died at that time, at 3:33 on that miserable Sunday morning. No, for that was when Kelly St. John died, too. And I do mean precisely to the minute!”

  Trask gaped; Goodly and Garvey, too. And the locator went on, “So unless it is a coincidence, pure synchronicity, there’s got to be a connection, a link between the dead Harry Keogh and the very much alive Scott St. John!”

  Trask found his voice, said, “Despite Harry’s final condition, his affliction at the end of things, still he was the best thing that ever happened to us. If St. John and the people he’s working with have somehow been influenced by Harry—”

  “—Then they’re okay by us!” said Chung.

  “Right,” said Trask. “But just who are his friends? Who is this woman, Shania? And what about this Wolf person?”

  At which the telepath Paul Garvey gasped, causing all eyes to turn in his direction.

  “What is it, Paul?” said Trask, immediately concerned. But a moment later he, too, gasped, then angrily snapped his fingers. “Damn! You’ve missed your appointment with your neurologist!”

  “Eh?” said Garvey, looking puzzled. And then: “Why, you’re right, I have! I forgot all about it as soon as Kellway started in on the results of his research. But my neurologist? Actually I don’t give a damn! Not when we’re talking about the world ending in just a week’s time! And anyway, that isn’t it. It’s what you just said that’s suddenly hit me.”

  “What I just said?” Trask repeated him. “How do you mean?”

  “Now ask yourself,” said Garvey, “who do we know who lives on Zakynthos?”

  “Zek Föener and Michael Simmons,” Trask answered at once.

  But Garvey said, “And . . . ?”

  “Eh? And?” Again Trask repeated; and then, barely concealing his impatience, “Why not just say what’s on your mind?”

  “And Wolf,” said Garvey. “I mean a real wolf of the wild, out of Sunside/Starside’s barrier mountains! And you know something? When I homed in on David’s probe to St. John’s house, I was one hundred percent certain that even through all that smog I was sensing three minds—but I’ll be damned if I could swear that all three of them were human!”

  For long moments there was silence, then Trask said, “Are you telling me that the third member of Scott St. John and his mystery woman’s team is a wolf?”

  “I’m saying I think he could be,” said Garvey. “And that I know how to check it out. Do we have Zek’s Zante number?”

  “But we can’t—” Ian Goodly’s high-pitched voice came piping in, until Trask stopped him short with:

  “But we must! I’m sorry Ian, but we can’t wait any longer. Your talent notwithstanding, we have to get a hold on this. And I do mean now! You said yourself that we have only a week left. Until what? Some kind of Big Bang? But that’s what you and Anna Marie were hinting at, surely? Well, that’s it, that’s all, Ian; we can’t simply stand aside and let this happen, no matter what the future tells you. I mean, St. John, an unknown woman, and a . . . a wolf, for God’s sake, against whatever the hell is up that crag in the Alps!? Okay, we definitely don’t want to go announcing our presence; I mean, we won’t be shouting it aloud, but by God we are going to be there!”

  He paused and looked from face to face, then said, “Right, and now I’ll tell you what I want done . . .”

  In Mordri One’s private, rock-hewn quarters in Schloss Zonigen, the Mordri Three sat facing each other around a small circular, marble-topped table with their long-fingered hands linked. They were all three in the Shing’t mould, which in the Khiff display that Scott St. John had experienced had shown the Shing’t to be a tall, gentle, very graceful, even beautiful race who, despite that they were undeniably alien, weren’t so very different from his own people. Finding them acceptable, Scott had even considered the idea that perhaps in some distant future, human beings would evolve into creatures much like them. Here in the austere Schloss Zonigen quarters of the pseudonymous Frau Gerda Lessing, however, he would certainly have noticed the difference.

  For the Mordris were mad, and madness is ugly. For comparison, they were to those Shing’t people that Scott had seen in his dream as a rabid hyena to an intelligent, well-bred collie. And as for the flowing grace of S
hing’t motion—the choreography of stylized, almost balletic movement—that was scarcely to be found in the frequently jerky animation and oddly erratic postures of the Mordri Three. For not only were their thoughts, their aims and ambitions diseased, debased, and deviant, but the Mordris must expend great efforts of will simply to retain control over their bodies. Which was why, unlike Shania Two, they must on occasion revert to these more familiar physical forms.

  All three wore high-collared kaftans: Mordri One, or Gerda Lessing, in a black material as deep as space; Mordri Two, also known as Simon Salcombe, in slate-grey; and Mordri Three, whose Earth name was Guyler Schweitzer, in white so pure it seemed to glow. Their dark, deep-seated eyes were closed; their features were void of the warm, smooth-flowing contours of Shing’t forebears, but instead were sharply angled, severe, and threatening. Clinging to their steeply sloping right shoulders, their Khiffs coiled tenuous tendrils around the narrow necks of their hosts’ kaftans, sent others probing in their ears to share and perhaps enhance their thoughts. Open and staring, the small red eyes of the Khiffs appeared vacant, as if they gazed into nowhere or at things otherwise unseen—which indeed was the case. For along with their hosts they’d been engaged upon one of their periodic probes of E-Branch, attempting to penetrate the permanent mind-smog cloaking the mind-spy HQ in London.

  For some hours now they had been sending out their probes, on this occasion finding the usual mental barriers more densely packed; but enjoying only a small measure of success in the one direction, in another they’d discovered something far more interesting.

  And now, as the Mordri Three gradually returned from their mental voyaging—their telepathic, group far-scanning—and opened their eyes, so their Khiffs shrank down and entered into the long heads of their hosts. And shortly, without opening her pale slit of a mouth, nevertheless Mordri One said: Is it possible, do you suppose, that we have been remiss? Have we perhaps underestimated, been overconfident, taken too much for granted, and even made mistakes? Have there been . . . errors?